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Col. Roosevelt's speech referred to on Page 17 was delivered in 
the New York Republican State Convention at Saratoga, Sept. 37, 
1910. 



Address commencing on page 73 is substance of an address deliv- 
ered by Charles H. Betts before a meeting of the western New York 
Publishers' Association at Rochester, N. Y., April 20, 1912. 



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I 







CHARLES H. BETTS 



Betts-Roosevelt Letters 



A Spirited and Illuminating Discussion on a Pure Democ- 
racy. Direct Nominations, the Initiative, the Ref- 
erendum and the Recall and the New York 
State Court of Appeals' Decision 
in the Workmen's Com- 
pensation Case 



BY 

CHARLES H. BETTS 

Editor of The Lyons Republican 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE LYONS REPUBLICAN COMPANY 

LyonSj N. Y. 
1912 



'S 



f "^ . 



Copyright, 1912, 

by 

The Lton^s Republican Company 



£;C!.A316460 



DEDICATION 

TO THE FATHERS, WHOSE WISDOM, STATES- 
MANSHIP AND PATRIOTISM FOUNDED THE AMER- 
ICAN REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC THE ONLY 

FREE REPUBLIC THAT EVER EXISTED THIS 

WORK IS DEDICATED. 



THE DEMAGOGUES 

Their heads with trifles well are filled, 
In trifles they are deeply skilled; 
And if some man, with sense endued, 
Should in their presence be so rude 
To speak like one who books has read, 
And show he wears a learned head, 
With anger fired they on him fall, 
He's persecuted by them all. 

— Voltaire. 



PREFACE 

There is in this country a widespread movement to overthrow the 
American constitution and undermine and destroy our American 
system of representative government. The purpose of this movement 
is to supplant our system with what is known as a pure or direct 
democracy. The most conspicuous manifestation of this movement 
is the adoption of direct primary nominations, the initiative, the ref- 
erendum and the recall in many states. 

This movement is not progressive, but reactionary. It is a species 
of political atavism. It is a reversion to the diseases, disorders and 
deformities of the primitive political state. This whole movement, 
which is promoted largely by noise, is being carried on in blissfully 
ignorant disregard of the plain teachings of history and experience, 
and in bold defiance of the enlightened statesmanship of the civilized 
world. 

Therefore, it has been deemed wise and timely, to present to the 
public in this form the Betts-Roosevelt letters, which contain a 
somewhat spirited and illuminating discussion of this whole subject. 

There is so much general ignorance on this subject, — largely 
because there has been no systematic study of it, — that it is high time 
the American system of government was thoroughly discussed and its 
merits presented to the public in a true hght. 

For the purpose of aiding in this necessary work, the writer has 
added to the Betts-Roosevelt letters a large number of quotations on 
this subject from philosophers, statesmen, historians, scholars and 
students of political science, past and present. It is his aim to mar- 
shal and present to the reader the best thoughts and conclusions of 
the greatest thinkers of the world on the subject. 

The writer hopes that these opinions, arguments and philosophi- 
cal observations will throw an added light upon our system of represen- 
tative government, and he is of the opinion that those who take the 
trouble to read the arguments and conclusions herein presented will 
gain a new appreciation of the American system of representative 
government, so wisely founded by the fathers of the Republic, who 
by the universal voice of posterity are admitted to have been a galaxy 
of the greatest statesmen ever assembled at a given time, to frame a 
constitution and found a government. 

It was the great world renowned English statesman, William E. 
Gladstone, who speaking of the American constitution, said: 

"It is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by 
the brain and purpose of man." 



6 PEEFACE 

The writer believes that the American system is the best form of 
government ever instituted among men and that a pure or direct 
democracy is a primitive and impractical form of government, not 
adapted to this great nation, and that its establishment in this country 
would result in weak, inefficient and bad government, and thereby 
do irreparable injury to the whole country. 

Therefore, he submits this Httle volume for the candid consider- 
ation of all intelligent and patriotic citizens. 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 
Lyons, N. Y., May 25, 1912. 



INTRODUCTION 

{Reprinted from 90th Anniversary Issue The Lyons Republican) 

In this Ninetieth Anniversary of The Lyons Republican, we are 
printing letters of former President Theodore Roosevelt and the Ed- 
itor of The Lyons Republican, Charles H. Betts, which will explain 
themselves. 

Mr. Betts has always been a friend and great admirer of Colonel 
Roosevelt and stood with him and voted on the State Committee for 
him, and in the last Republican State Convention, when many of his 
old friends opposed him. Mr. Betts did not agree with Colonel Roose- 
velt on the question of direct nominations, yet he supported him in 
spite of this fact. 

He, however, frankly told Colonel Roosevelt that he was against 
the proposition and he voted for the Wadsworth amendment to the 
platform in the RepubUcan state convention. At the state conven- 
tion. Colonel Roosevelt, after he was elected chairman, in his speech, 
came out openly in favor of a Pure Democracy and in addition to 
direct nominations he has since embraced and advocated the Initia- 
tive, the Referendum and the Recall, all of which are destructive of 
Representative Government. 

In a recent article in the Outlook, Colonel Roosevelt vigorously 
denounced the decision of the New York State Court of Appeals in 
what is known as "The Workmen's Compensation Case," the Court 
having declared this law to be unconstitutional. 

Mr. Betts, after reading this article in The Outlook, wrote Colonel 
Roosevelt a letter criticising his attitude on the question and especial- 
ly his intimation that the courts should render decisions in harmony 
with public sentiment. 

Colonel Roosevelt replied in his usual vigorous and emphatic 
style, defending his position and criticising the position taken by Mr. 
Betts, alleging that it was not his own position but the position out- 
lined in Mr. Betts' letter which would "lead to revolution." 

Mr. Betts replied in a long letter in which he vigorously defends 
the decision of the Court of Appeals and then takes occasion to express 
his own views, freely and frankly, without reserve, upon the govern- 
mental questions, on which he differs with Colonel Roosevelt. 

The letters, in the order they were written, follow: 



8 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

MR. BETTS' FIRST LETTER 

Lyons, N. Y., May 13, 1911. 
Col. Theodore Roosevelt, 

The Outlook Office, 
New York City. 

My dear Colonel: I want to congratulate you upon the article 
which you wrote in a recent issue of The Outlook, entitled "Murder 
is Murder." I agree fully with the sentiments expressed in your 
article and you are entirely right when you say that the labor leaders 
are injuring their cause by the course they are pursuing in raising 
money as labor organizations to defend those charged with the crime 
of murder. 

I have read, however, with regret your article in The Outlook 
of May thirteenth attacking the decision of the Court of Appeals 
and to the sentiments you express in that article I dissent as strongly 
as I approve of the sentiments expressed in the other article. If the 
time ever comes when the courts of this country interpret the laws 
in harmony with ignorant public sentiment, fanned into flame by un- 
informed and ignorant yellow journals, it will be a sad day for this 
Republic. 

If the time ever comes when the courts through fear of public 
clamour, fanned into existence by muck raking reporters, render de- 
cisions not in harmony with the law and with precedent, but in 
harmony with public clamour, it will be a sad day for this Republic. 

If the time ever comes when the courts for the same reason throw 
written constitutions into the waste basket and anarchy takes the 
place of constitution, law and order, it will be a sad day for this 
Republic, and to my mind any man who advocates such a course, 
however honest he may be, must of necessity be an enemy to the best 
interests of his country and to mankind. 

The three requisites of good government are order, stability and 
progress. These essentials of good government can only be main- 
tained by constitutions, law, order and a fearless judiciary. I have 
always had for you the sincerest admiration. I have not always been 
able to agree with you upon all public questions and particularly the 
question of direct nominations, but your attack upon the Court of 
Appeals and your intimation that in the future it may be necessary 
to force the courts to render decisions in favor of the views of par- 
ticular men or the temporary sentiment of the hour and ignore consti- 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 9 

tutions and laws in rendering their decisions, seems to me to go so 
far that even your intimate and sincere friends must not only regret 
your action, but dissent from your views. 

I am one of those who believe in giving every other man the 
same right that I claim for myself, and that is the right to express 
his honest views. This is an age of intellectual hospitality and 
toleration is the rising sun of our twentieth century civilization. 
While I grant to you the rights which I claim for myself, yet I, so far 
as I am concerned, must do all that I can to combat the theory laid 
down in your article in The Outlook of May thirteenth, because I 
firmly believe that in the end it would lead to political anarchy 
and useless revolution. 

With kind regards, I am, as always. 

Your friend, 
C. H. BETTS. 

COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S REPLY 

THE OUTLOOK 

287 Fourth Avenue, New York 

Office of Theodore Roosevelt, June 2, 1911. 
My dear Mr. Betts : Really, it is hard to believe that you read my 
article on the Courts, because it is an absurdity to say that I had 
desired the Court to "render decisions in favor of the views of par- 
ticular men or the temporary sentiment of the hour, and ignore Con- 
stitutions and law." My contention is that the Court of Appeals in 
this case rendered a decision simply in accordance with the temporary 
sentiments of certain particular men at this hour, and ignored the 
Constitution and laws, as Marshall always interpreted both Constitu- 
tion and laws, and that their conduct was a most flagrant and wanton 
abuse of a great power, an abuse which, if continued, will render it 
the duty of all patriotic men to take steps that will at least minimize 
the chance of such action in the future. If the course I advocated 
in The Outlook is combated with permanent success, it will in the end 
bring about just what you say you fear, i. e., "political anarchy and 
useless revolution." It is simple nonsense to suppose that this coun- 
try will tolerate permanently a line of action like that you are 
upholding on the part of the Court of Appeals. Isolated acts of the 
kind our people may tolerate from ignorance, but they would be unfit 
for self-government if they submitted permanently to such a course of 



10 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITBD DISCUSSION 

conduct; and if the position outlined in your letter was taken as a 
permanent course of policy, it would bring about a revolution. My 
plea is for rational growth ; my plea is that the Court act with ordinary 
statesmanship, ordinary regard for the Constitution, as a living aid 
to growth, not as a straight jacket; ordinary regard for the laws, 
the rights of humanity, and the growth of civilization. I wish to 
state with all emphasis that no man who takes the opposite ground 
to that which I have taken in the article in question has any right to 
be on the bench; and it is a misfortune to have him there. Four 
Federal judges, of the United States' Courts, have written me since 
that article appeared, stating that they absolutely agree with it, 
that they regarded the action of the Court of Appeals of New York 
as so utterly reactionary as to be an invitation to revolution, and that 
they felt I was rendering a real and conservative public service in 
writing as I did. My dear Mr. Betts, have you forgotten that the Re- 
publican party was founded largely to protest against the very type 
of view concerning the Courts which you now uphold? Have you 
forgotten Lincoln's repeated strictures on the Supreme Court for the 
Dred Scott decision? That decision was worse in degree, but not in 
kind, than the one which I assail. Have you forgotten what Lincoln 
wrote in his first inaugural (in justifying the position he had repeat- 
edly taken, that he would endeavor to secure a reversal of the Dred 
Scott decision — just as I wish this New York decision reversed) : ''If 
the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole 
people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the (court) * * * the 
people will have ceased to be their own rulers." I protest against 
this servile view merely as Abraham Lincoln protested. 

Sincerely yours, 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



MR. BETTS' REJOINDER 

Lyons, N. Y., July 8, 1911. 
Col. Theodore Roosevelt, 

287 Fifth Ave., New York City. 

My dear Col. Roosevelt: On my return from a several weeks' 
vacation, your letter of June 2nd is before me, and I am very glad 
to receive the same. I am always glad to read your vigorous and 
frank expressions of opinion, whether in a personal communication 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 11 

or a public periodical, but it is a source of deep regret to me to be 
unable to agree with the opinions of a man whom I so much admire. 
You say that four Federal judges have written you stating that 
your criticism of the decision of the Court of Appeals of New York 
State is correct. I have talked with a great many lawyers and judges, 
every one of whom expressed the opposite opinion. This only illus- 
trates how honest men may differ, and proves conclusively that the 
opinions of men are as different and numerous as the leaves upon the 
trees. In your letter you say: 

" Really, it is hard to believe that you have read my 
article on the Courts, because it is an absurdity to say 
that I had desired the Court to render justice in favor of 
the views of particular men or the temporary sentiment 
of the hour, and ignore constitutions and law. My con- 
tention is that the Court of Appeals in this case ren- 
dered a decision simply in accordance with the tempo- 
rary sentiments of certain particular men at this hour, 
and ignored the constitution and the laws, as Marshall 
always interpreted both constitution and law, and that 
their conduct was a most flagrant and wanton abuse of a 
great power. An abuse which if continued, will render 
it the duty of patriotic men to take steps that will at 
least minimize the chances of such action in the future." 

IN HARMONY WITH THE CONSTITUTION 

Passing over the implied threat contained in the last sentence 
that the Courts must render their decisions in harmony with public 
sentiment or suffer the consequences, let me call your attention to 
the fact that the decision of the Court of Appeals is in harmony with 
the Constitution of this State, and I can hardly conceive how you 
could make the statements which you have made, if you had read the 
full text of the Court's decision. 

Article 1, Section 2, of the State Constitution says: 

"The trial by jury in all cases where it has been 
heretofore used shall remain inviolate /orever; but a jury 
trial may be waived by the parties in all civil cases in the 
manner to be prescribed by law." 

This section of the State Constitution guarantees to every citizen 
the right to a hearing before a jury of his peers. The act of the 
legislature which the Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional 
took this right absolutely away from a certain class of citizens, who 
happen to be employers. 



12 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

Section 219a of the act of 1910, provides for the scale of compen- 
sation an employer must pay to an employee's heirs when such em- 
ployee is killed by an accident. This compensation is awarded by 
legislative fiat, without giving the employer a hearing before any 
court or before any jury. 

Not only this, if the employer has obeyed the law, has provided 
the necessary safe-guards in his manufacturing establishment re- 
quired by the factory inspection law, and all other law, and one of his 
employees is killed by his own negligence or carelessness, through 
his own fault and no fault of his employer, yet the employer must 
pay over a certain amount of his property to the widow or next of 
kin of the man who was killed in an accident through his own negli- 
gence or carelessness, and the innocent employer who has obeyed the 
law and who has committed no fault and is in no way responsible for 
the accident, under this statute is to have a part of his property 
taken away from him and given to another, without ever having a 
hearing in court or the justice of the claim against him passed upon 
by a jury. If this is not taking property in violation of the Constitu- 
tion and without "due process of law," then words have lost their 
meaning and acts have been divorced from their consequences. 

THE COURTIS OPINION 

The learned court, in its decision, says: 

"In all cases where there is a right to trial by jury 
there are two elements which necessarily enter into a 
verdict for the plaintiff: 

First — The right to recovery. 

Second — The amount of the recovery. 

It is as much the right of a defendant to have a 
jury assess the damages claimed against him, as it is to 
have the question of his liability determined by the 
same body. 

It is equally obvious it seems to us that it is the in- 
tention of the section of the Constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 
2) to provide that in all controversies in the Courts of 
law either side should finally have a right to a jury trial 
on the question of liability, and however successful or 
unsuccessful jury trials may be in cases of employers' 
liability or any other cases, the solemn mandate of the 
Constitution cannot be set aside." 

These clear and emphatic words cannot be misunderstood by any 
intelligent citizen. They carry conviction to every open mind. The 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 13 

decision of the Court of Appeals is in harmony with the Constitution, 
is sound in law, is sanctioned by justice and confirmed by reason and 
common sense. 

And right here I wish to say, and I say it without fear of success- 
ful contradiction, that there is no place on earth, since the dawn of 
civilization, where the sacred goddesses of liberty and justice have 
so often met in fond embrace, as under the impartial folds of the 
ermine of an Independent Judiciary. 

I will not stop here to discuss elaborately the decision of the 
Court of Appeals in the Workmen's Compensation case, and your 
attack upon that decision. I have both your article and a full text 
of the decision of the Court before me and I am preparing an article 
on that subject, which I shall publish later, in which I shall endeavor 
to do both you and the Court justice. 

WOULD BRING ABOUT A REVOLUTION 

In your letter among other things you say: 

"If the position outlined in your letter was taken as 
a permanent policy, it would bring about a revolution." 

In view of this charge I feel warranted in communicating to you 
freely, frankly and without reserve, my ideas. This is my justifica- 
tion for the length of this communication. 

I have always been one of your devoted admirers, and nine times 
out of ten, I have been able to agree with you throughout your dis- 
tinguished public career. I fully appreciate the great service which 
you have rendered to your country and to mankind, and I have 
always contended, and still contend, that you will take your place in 
history beside Washington and Lincoln. 

Whatever difference of opinion we may have upon questions of 
government will never lessen in any degree my personal regard for you, 
or my appreciation of your magnificent achievements. You have 
done more than any other one man in this country to awaken public 
interest and quicken the public conscience and set in motion needed 
reforms, and for this you are entitled to the respect and esteem of 
every one of your fellow countrymen. But it does seem to me that 
in the last year you have been drifting away from the fundamental 
principles of our government and teaching doctrines inconsistent with 
our enlightened representative system. 

You know that I have never been able to agree with you upon 
the question of Direct Nominations, and I was pained and surprised 



14 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

to see you go so far as to advocate the Initiative, the Referendum 
and the Recall. I always supposed that you were a statesman of the 
Hamiltonian school, and if I know anything about the statesmanship 
of Hamilton, Direct Nominations, the Initiative, the Referendum and 
the Recall are as far from the teachings of Hamilton as the north pole 
is from the south pole. 

TWO SCHOOLS OF STATESMEN 

There have been in this country two different schools of states- 
men. One school was founded and led by Hamilton, the other by 
Jefferson. Hamilton was one of the greatest creative and constructive 
statesmen the world has ever known. Jefferson was one of the most 
plausible phrase-makers and sophists. 

I believe that these two schools of statesmen are necessary; that 
they were and are a necessary outgrowth of conditions. I regard 
Clay, Webster, Seward, Lincoln, Blaine, Conklin, McKinley, Lodge, 
Depew, Black, Root and Taft as the direct descendants of the Hamil- 
tonian school of statesmanship. I regard Bryan, Borah, Bourne, 
Bristow, Poindexter, La Follette and Hearst as the direct descendants 
of the Jeffersonian school of statesmanship. 

These two contending schools of statesmanship have ever been a 
check on each other and the conflict between the conservatism of 
the one and the radicalism of the other has resulted in a steady and 
reasonable progress. But there is one thing that I have always no- 
ticed in reading history and that is, when the phrase-maker and the 
sophist gets in office he is always obliged to discard his impractical 
theories and square his performance with the doctrines of the practical 
and constructive statesman. 

For instance, when Jefferson became President of the United 
States, instead of putting his theories into practice, he was obliged 
to adopt the principles laid down by Hamilton, and Prof. Edward 
Elliott, in his splendid work entitled "The Biographical Story of the 
Constitution," in summing up Jefferson's career, very truthfully says: 

"His success was in his faith, not in his works. 
From the standpoint of achievement in national affairs, 
only the Louisiana purchase saves him from complete 
failure; from the standpoint of political influence his 
faith in the people makes him a vital force in the world 
today. His greatest fault was that ' he died as he lived, 
in the odor of phrases.' His greatest virtue that he was 
wise enough to sacrifice phrases to reality, to accept in 
practice what he rejected in theory." 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 15 

In direct opposition to his own teachings Jefferson put into 
operation the doctrines of Hamilton relative to the acquisition of new 
territory in the purchase of Louisiana, his only great achievement. 

What a contrast the career of Hamilton presents. There is 
hardly anything of permanence in our institutions today that was not 
originally conceived by him. It was largely through his genius that 
the foundation of this Republic was laid so deep and broad that upon 
it has been reared the grandest governmental structure the world 
has ever known. In speaking of Hamilton, Daniel Webster said: 

"He smote the rock of the national resources and 
abundant streams of revenue gushed forth; he touched 
the dead corpse of Public Credit and it sprang upon its 
feet." 

Prof. Edward Eliott, speaking of Hamilton's statesmanship, says: 

"The great passion of Hamilton's hfe was love of 
an orderly direction in human affairs; mankind in the 
mass he regarded as weak, and the weakness demanded 
the strength of government if the human race was to 
enjoy the blessings of liberty. A strong government was 
necessary to restrain the natural disorders of society, 
whatever the character of its organization. Order and 
strength were inseparable in all his thoughts of govern- 
ment, his practical experience had demonstrated that 
social disorder and governmental weakness were correla- 
tive terms and the verdict of history has confirmed his 
experience." 

Frederick Scott Oliver, an English writer, in his great work 
declares that Hamilton was a world statesman. He says: 

"The qualities of his statesmanship, the nature of 
that inarticulate desire for Union on which he built the 
strength and obstinacy of those difficulties which he en- 
countered at every turn, are subjects of universal inter- 
est. He is no local hero, but one whose work and great- 
ness has a meaning for the Whole World." 

Now, my dear Col. Roosevelt, it seems to me that the descendants 
of the Hamiltonian school have been keeping step with the onward 
march of civilization and progress, but they propose to go only so 
fast as they can go and remain within the line of reason, of law and 
of the Constitution. On the other hand it seems to me that the des- 
cendants of the Jeffersonian school have become so radical that they 
are willing to supplant reason with hysteria and leap over the law 
and the Constitution into the maelstrom of Democratic Socialism. 



16 BETTS-KOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

It is this head-long course, away from the fundamental principles of 
representative government into the Populistic schemes of Direct 
Nominations, the Initiative, the Referendum and the Recall, which in 
the last analysis means Democratic Socialism, against which I protest 
and shall forever fight. 

I still believe in our enlightened system of representative govern- 
ment, and I believe that it has been the greatest success of any 
government that was ever instituted among men, and I appeal to the 
history of this country to prove it. I contend that wherever the 
machinery of our representative government has been clogged or 
deranged, it has not been the fault of the system, but it has been the 
fault of men. It has been the fault of human nature. It has been the 
weakness and wickedness of men that has deranged our system 
wherever it has been deranged, and no system of government will 
produce perfect results with imperfect human nature. 

Not only this, but Direct Nominations, the Initiative, the Referen- 
dum and the Recall, open a wider field for the exhibition and display of 
the very weakness and wickedness of which you and others now com- 
plain. Under this system the very elements in human nature which 
have been responsible for clogging and deranging temporarily in 
some cases our present system, will have a larger field for activity, 
and will multiply our present evils a hundred fold. 

THE TWO POSITIONS DEFINED 

You say that the doctrines which I teach will lead to revolution, 
while I contend that it is you who are sowing the seeds of revolution. 
My conception of the difference between your position and mine is 
this : I am, in my feeble way, endeavoring to teach the people that 
it is always wiser, safer and better for them to take the sober second 
thought, act on full and correct information, and then follow the 
steady, white light of Reason. 

On the contrary, it seems to me that you are trying to teach 
the people to act on sudden impulse and uninformed surface senti- 
ment and follow the flickering, fleeting flame of temporary Emotion. 

I cannot agree with you when you say that a Judge who will 
render a decision such as that rendered by our Court of Appeals has 
"no right to sit upon the bench." My opinion of the Court of Appeals 
of the State of New York is more accurately reflected by the dis- 
tinguished Justice Harlan, who, in a recent speech to the legislature, 
said that the decisions of the New York State Court of Appeals were 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 17 

always received by the United States Supreme Court with high re- 
spect and great consideration. 

In your letter you express your opinigtcis frankly and with great 
force and emphasis. I respect you for doing this. I have always 
admired you for having the courage to tell exactly what you think, 
and I could not respect myself if I did not follow your example in 
this regard. 

Therefore, permit me to say, that when you returned from Europe 
and received the greatest ovation ever tendered to an American citi- 
zen, you at once ignored the honest advice and kindly warnings of 
your sincere and life-long friends, including the writer, and surrounded 
yourself with the Hughes high-brows and the Abbott theologians 
and courageously assumed all the burdens of both aggregations. 
You allowed them to place upon your strong and powerful b^ck all of 
their theories, fads, fallacies and fancies, since which time you have 
been out of touch with the real pol^feal situation in this country. 
For a confirmation of this statement consult the last election returns. 

In this state you made an ethical and brilliant appeal to the 
people. Murphy made a strong cash appeal to the same people and 
on account of their high intelligence and extreme virtue. Murphy won. 

In this connection I wish to say, despite all of his influence, with 
a silver lining, Murphy could not have won if he had been confronted 
by four years of the solid achievements of a Republican yarty admin- 
istration, instead of four years of executive -personal exploitation. It 
was the reaction from the excesses and horrors of the French Revolu- 
tion that resulted in the restoration of the Bourbon kings, and it was 
the reaction from the excessive party treason and fake reforms of 
the Hughes administration that resulted in the restoration of Tam- 
many Hall, and for the first time in our history, has extended the 
power of that corrupt organization over the entire state, so that at 
this moment we are in the center of an era of political piracy, spolia- 
tion and plunder, such as the state has not witnessed since the days 
of Tweed. 




ROOSEVELT S SPEEOT AT CONVENTION 

At the last Republican State Convention at Saratoga, you made 
the statement in your speech that those who favor direct nomina- 
tions trust the people, while those who do not favor direct nomina- 
tions do not trust the people. This is the exact opposite of the facts. 

Let us examine this proposition for a moment. We who believe 



/ 



18 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

in the system of representative government, do trust the people. We 
trust them to act for themselves within the circle of activity where 
they can obtain correct information to act upon. 

We are in favor of trusting the people to pick out their candi- 
dates and their delegates in their immediate community, in their 
village, their town or their ward, where they know the reputation, 
character, standing, ability and general fitness of the men whom 
they are to select as representatives. 

In other words, we are willing to trust the people to exercise 
their intelligence where they have the information to exercise their 
intelligence on. But those who believe in direct nominations do 
not so trust the people. They say that the people cannot be trusted 
to use their own personal knowledge and personal information in 
regard to selecting delegates in their own communities where they 
have accurate information. 

They contend that this system of government has broken down 
and proved a failure, and therefore they propose a system whereby 
the people shall be called upon to act beyond the sphere where they 
can get accurate information and have personal knowledge, and they 
contend that the people can act more intelligently and wisely by 
^^uessing what is the best thing to do, than by knowing what is the 
best thing to do. 

For let it be remembered, the people can know when they have 
correct information and they cannot know without such information. 

If the people cannot intelligently and properly select delegates in 
their towns and wards, in their immediate vicinity, where they have 
the advantage of personal acquaintance, personal knowledge and 
correct information about the character, standing and fitness of the 
delegates to be selected from their friends and neighbors, then how 
in the name of common sense are they to make an intelligent and 
wise selection of candidates 10 and 20 and sometimes 100 and 300 
miles away, under direct nominations, where the people are absolute- 
ly deprived of the advantage of personal acquaintance and reliable 
information? 

To argue that the people can select candidates hundreds of miles 
away, whom they have never seen and have only second-hand and 
conflicting information about better than they can select delegates 
in their own towns, from their friends and neighbors, with whom they 
are personally acquainted, and about whom they have accurate infor- 
mation, is to argue an absurdity. It is arguing to the effect that lack 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 19 

of any knowledge whatever is a better guide than personal knowledge 
and that darkness is a better and more reliable guide than light. 

It is a recognized law of psychology that accuracy of perception 
grows less as the square of the distance increases. Objects beyond 
our reach, like candidates miles away, and like the clouds, are not 
truthfully pictured. The senses deal correctly only with the near and 
familiar. Therefore, direct nominations is in conflict with the 
science of psychology and the laws of nature. 

On the other hand, the representative delegate system, which 
provides that the people shall select their delegates from small civil 
divisions — consisting of a town or a ward where they have personal 
knowledge and first-hand information upon which to base their 
action, is in harmony with political, social and psychological science. 

It was the consideration of these facts that led the wise framers 
of the Federal Constitution to make this a Representative Republic, 
instead of a Pure Democracy. They knew the people could not act 
intelligently and wisely beyond the sphere where they could get first 
hand, reliable and accurate information to act upon, and so they pro- 
vided that in that distant sphere the people should act through 
representatives selected from their local friends, neighbors and prom- 
inent citizens. Their wisdom has never been excelled. 

One of the stock arguments of our modern demagogues is that 
the people are directly interested in the government and in the legis- 
lation, and therefore they should directly legislate and administer 
the government. This is plausible, this sounds fine, but I have noticed 
that while the people are also directly interested in their health, they 
employ a trusted, experienced and informed physician to treat them 
when they are ill. When they have a law suit they employ a trained 
and experienced lawyer, in whom they have confidence, to try their 
case. 

Notwithstanding the fact that they are directly interested in their 
health and in winning their law suit, they have the intelligence and 
the judgment to realize that he who is fitted to try their law suit 
and treat their disease, must be someone who has specially fitted him- 
self for that purpose, and this is no more true than it is that those 
who engage in legislation and government should be equally trained 
and qualified by ability, experience and information to understand 
and comprehend the intricate sciences of legislation and government. 



20 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

In his great speech delivered in the New York State Convention, 
Hamilton said: 

"It has been observed that a pure Democracy, if it 
were practical, would be the most perfect goverjiment. 
EXPERIENCE HAS PROVED THAT NO POSI- 
TION IN POLITICS IS MORE FALSE THAN THIS. 
The ancient democracies, in which the people them-] 
selves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good 
government. Their very character was tyranny, their 
figure deformity. When they assembled the field of de- 
bate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable 
of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity. In 
these assemblies the enemies of the people brought for- 
ward their plans of ambition systematically. They 
were opposed by their enemies of another party; and it 
became a matter of contingency whether the people sub- 
jected themselves to be led blindly by one tyrant or by 
another." 

And again, Hamilton, who was acquainted with history, and who 
knew that direct popular government and attempted mass action was 
the rock upon which all of the ancient Republics were wrecked, and 
that too much democracy leads to despotism and then to monarchy 
said : 

"Real liberty is never found in despotisms, or the 
extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. 
As long as offices are open to all men, and no constitu- 
tional rank is established, it is PURE REPUBLICAN- 
ISM. But if we incline too much to Democracy, we shall 
soon shoot into a Monarchy." 

HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON AGREE 

Although Hamilton and Jefferson represented opposite schools 
of statesmanship, yet they both agreed that a Representative Repub- 
lic was the only form of government adapted to a large territory and 
large population, and so Jefferson said: 

"Let us then, with courage and confidence pursue 
our own Federal and Republican principles, our attach- 
ment to Union and Representative government, 

"If there be any among us who would like to dis- 
solve this union, or change its Republican form, let them 
stand undisturbed as monuments to the safety with 
which error of opinion may be tolerated when Reason is 
left free to combat it." 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 21 

I predict that in the not distant future the people of this coun- 
try will awaken to a realization of the fact that the wisdom of the 
fathers who founded this Republic, is a more reliable and trust- 
worthy guide than the noise of their sons. 

It is not systems that make men, it is men that make systems. 
It is not systems and laws that inject into the human heart dishon- 
esty, vice, viciousness and corruption, neither can systems and laws 
eliminate these elements from human nature. Reform must com- 
mence within the individual and it can take place nowhere else. 

These are plain, simple facts which can be readily understood and 
comprehended by the ordinarily intelligent school boy. And yet, 
they are facts which are overlooked by our skirt-dancing politicians, 
moving picture statesmen and vaudeville demagogues. And that is 
what is the matter with the country. It is not the representative 
system, but it is the methods employed by the dishonest or the ignor- 
ant and uninformed who are trying to administer the system. The 
people should have intelligence enough to select able and honest 
representatives. This is all that is needed, and if they cannot select 
good delegates at home under our present system, they certainly can- 
not select good candidates away from home, under direct nomina- 
tions. 

TELL THE PEOPLE THE TRUTH 

Let us be honest with the people. Let us tell them the truth. Let 
us not flatter them and tell them that they are all right and their 
representatives all wrong, because this is not the case. If you were 
sick and called a doctor you would want him to tell you the truth, 
and if he were honest he would do so. You would not want him to 
flatter you and tell you that you were all right and let the disease 
devour you, but that is the course pursued by many of our modern 
demagogues. 

They are telling the people that they are all right, but that their 
system of government is all wrong, when as a matter of fact, the 
fault is in the people themselves and not in their government. If the 
people were all honest, were all unselfish, were all intelligent and 
thoroughly civilized, there would be no trouble in working the machin- 
ery of our government, and there would be no trouble in selecting 
from their number, honest, faithful and conscientious representatives 
to administer the government. 

It is not the system of government that is at fault ; it is the sus- 



22 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSIOI^ 

tern of human nature, and to try to reform the people by changing 
their free representative government is as absurd and ridiculous as 
it would be to try to reform the people by changing the cut of their 
clothes. 

A simple or pure democracy mixes intelligence and ignorance, 
folly and wisdom, vice and virtue, inexperience and experience, dem- 
agogy and statesmanship altogether in hopeless confusion and the 
bad neutralizes the good and pulls both the intellectual and moral standard 
down to the dead level of mediocrity, but when we engraft upon a pure 
democracy the representative system, we then enable the people to 
pick out men of character, experience, wisdom and statesmanship, 
wherever they can be found, and assemble them in a representative 
body — in a legislature or a convention, where they can act for the 
public good. 

In this way, by this system of government, action can be obtained 
on a higher level and a more intelligent basis, than it can be obtained 
by the great mass of people acting for themselves. 

Not only this, but such representatives are always in a position 
to obtain important facts and valuable information that the masses 
of the people could never obtain in the necessary time for govern- 
mental action. Let me illustrate. When you were President, you 
were in possession of important facts and valuable information, 
which led you, as the people's representative, to take Panama. 

Suppose you had been obliged to wait for the people to obtain 
and assimilate and understand all the facts in your possession, and 
then wait for the people to take the initiative, do you think we would 
ever have had Panama? And suppose you had been obliged to submit 
the whole proposition to the Referendum, do you not know that under 
such a system the Panama Canal, which is now being constructed and 
will soon be completed, would forever have remained the dream of 
the American statesman. 

Montesquieu had a clear conception of the science of government 
when he said: 

"As most citizens have sufficient ability to choose, 
although unqualified to be chosen, so the people, though 
capable of calling others to account for their administra- 
tion, are incapable of conducting the administration 
themselves. 

"The public business must be carried on with a cer- 
tain motion, neither too quick nor too slow. But the 
motion of the people is always either too remiss or too 



BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 23 

violent. Sometimes with a hundred thousand arms they 
overturn all before them ; and sometimes with a hundred 
thousand feet they creep like insects. 

When this direct nominations theory, and all of the other Popu- 
listic theories, are reduced to the last analysis and subjected to the 
light of reason, their fallacies fade and vanish one by one like dew 
before the shining sun. 

In closing the discussion on this point, let me make myself clear, 
let me make myself explicit. 

I contend that to favor the present system which permits the 
people to select their delegates or representatives in their own towns 
and wards, where they have the benefit of the light of experience, 
personal acquaintance, personal knowledge and full and reliable in- 
formation about such representatives, as I do, is to place absolute 
confidence and trust in the people and in their intelligence and their 
judgment. 

I further contend that to favor the changing of this system so as 
to extinguish the light of experience, personal acquaintance, personal 
knowledge and full and reliable information about such representa- 
tives, as you do, and require the people to select candidates in the 
dark, hundreds of miles away, by the scheme of direct nominations, 
is to distrust and discredit the people, and insult their intelligence 
hy contending that they can act more wisely in the dark than they can in 
the light. 

WOODROW WILSON^S BAD EXAMPLE 

I have confidence in the open mindedness and sincerity of the 
American people; I believe that they love their country, that they 
are patriotic and that they want to know the actual truth about all 
public questions. Therefore, I have no sympathy with the cowards in 
public life, who advocate what they do not believe and what they 
know to be wrong, simply because it is temporarily popular, and who 
support measures against their clear convictions and honest judgment. 

Woodrow Wilson, when he was President of Princeton University, 
when he was a scholar, thinker, statesman and philosopher, writing 
of direct popular government as involved in Direct Nominations, the 
Initiative and the Referendum, said: 

"Where it (the Referendum) has been employed it 
has not promised either progress or enlightenment, lead- 
ing rather to doubtful experiment and to reactionary 
displays of prejudice, than to really useful legislation. 



24 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

"A government must have organs; it cannot act in- 
organically, by masses. It must have a law making body ; 
it can no more make law through the voters than it can 
make law through its newspapers." 

Later, after he had been elected to office and he became ambitious 
to be nominated for president, he began to trim his sails to catch the 
popular breeze, and while on a recent stumping tour, speaking as a 
politician instead of a statesman, as a demagogue instead of a philos- 
opher, he said: 

"To nullify bad legislation the Referendum must be 
adopted, and it is only a question of time until it will be 
extended to the nation." 

Let us not imitate Woodrow Wilson. Let us not be hypocrites 
to obtain a public office. Let us not strike a dramatic "holier than 
thou" attitude, roll our eyes to Heaven, and with honeyed words of 
flattery on our lips and deception and hypocrisy in our hearts, preach 
what we do not believe. 

Let us not waste our time preaching about "moral uplift," but let 
us get down to business and preach the good old fashioned doctrine 
of common honesty. We can rear splendid ideals on the foundation 
of common honesty, but we can never rear high ideals on the founda- 
tion of hypocrisy. 

This leads me to the observation that hypocrisy is the cancer 
that is eating honesty out of the heart of humanity. The best way 
to reform humanity is to have a surgical operation and remove the 
malignant growth. 

The man who sells his honest convictions for an office is as dis- 
honest and as dishonorable as the man who sells his vote for money. 
He is more dishonorable than the poor man who sells his vote, be- 
cause he needs the money. Honor purchased with the usury of self 
respect is not worth having; honor bought with the sacrifice of honest 
convictions becomes a badge of infamy. 

COMPOSITION OF THE PUBLIC 

I know that it is the modern fashion to flatter the people, to fool 
the people and make them believe that they know all about the science 
of government, but notwithstanding this I have no illusions about the 
public. I know exactly of what it is composed. It is composed of 
the intelligent and the ignorant, the virtuous and the vicious, the 
honest and the dishonest, the patriot and the hypocrite, the Chris- 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 25 

tian and the criminal, the fool and the sage, the politician and the 
demagogue, the "floater" and the statesman. ^ 

I also know that the people's representatives sometimes betray^ 
their trust, but I make the contention that the per cent, of honest 
representatives in the political world is as large as the per cent, of 
honest representatives in any other field of human activity. I make 
the further contention that the per cent, of honest men among the 
people's representatives is higher than the per cent, of honest men 
among the people themselves, because the representatives are men of 
more than average ability, standing and character, and are selected 
for this reason. 

Take the case of Ohio. To be sure, a few of the members of \ 
the legislature seemed to have been guilty of bribery, but what about / 
Adams county, where over one-half of the voting population have/ 
confessed that they were corruptionists on election day and have been/ 
disfranchised on that account. How many of the voters have not 
confessed, and how many Adams counties are there in the Unitedj 
States? 

I know something about the history of the world as it is written 
in rocks and books. I know that man is an animal who has become 
polished, refined and rendered kind, generous and attractive by the 
veneer of civilization, and that under this veneer, liable to be fanned 
into activity at any time, lies dormant all of the brutal instincts be- 
queathed to him by a savage ancestry. I am familiar with the out- 
bursts of human temper, the hurricanes of human passion, and the 
whirlwinds of human brutality, as they are recorded in the pages of 
history. I know that it was the ignorance, bigotry and barbarism 
of the people that kept the horizon lurid with the fagot's flame for 
a thousand years and deluged the earth with human blood. I know 
something about mobs and lynchings in our own day, and yet I 
agree with that profound political philosopher, Edmund Burke, when 
he says: 

" Man is a most unwise and a most wise being. The 
individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, 
are foolish, when they act without deliberation, but the 
species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species, 
it almost always acts right." 

I fully realize that we have been passing through a transition 
period and that the people temporarily have allowed the sensational 
journals and the political demagogues to lead them from the serene 



26 BETTS-KOOSEVELT LETTBES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

heights of sanity into the dismal swamp of hysteria, where, with 
their feet resting on the ever yielding foundations of muck and en- 
vironed by fog and noise, the people have reached a mental attitude 
where they are more easily attracted by the sophistry and cheap 
cure-all promises of the demagogue than by the solid arguments and 
sound logic of the statesman. This is the cause of more than half 
our present ills, but in the East can now again be seen the rising sun 
of Reason, whose rays have already illuminated the decision of the 
United States Supreme Court. 

Those who tell the people that they know all about the science 
of legislation and government, might as well go a step further and 
tell them that they know all about the science of geology, of chemistry 
and of astronomy; one is as reasonable as the other. 

A man must serve an apprenticeship to even become a black- 
smith, but the theory is broad, and seems to be popular, that it re- 
quires no preparation to become a maker of laws and constitutions. 
The theory is seriously promulgated; that the ignorant Italian who 
has just been naturalized in order to sell his vote, is as competent to 
engage in the science of legislation and the administration of govern- 
ment, as the trained statesman with half a century of accumulated 
experience, knowledge and wisdom. What a ridiculous theory! It 
should be advanced only for the purpose of flattering fools! I chal- 
lenge the correctness and sanity of this theory and stand ready to debate 
it with any man on earth. 

MUST DEAL WITH PEOPLE AS THEY ARE 

I wish to take this occasion to say that with your patriotic desire 
to improve the social and political conditions of the great mass of our 
fellow citizens, I am in hearty sympathy. But if we are to accomplish 
results we must view the situation as it is and not as we would like 
to have it. 

We must deal with people, conditions and nature as they are and 
not as we would like to have them. We must be wise enough to use 
the instrumentalities at hand to accomplish practical and beneficial 
results and make a gradual and steady improvement in social and 
political conditions along the line toward our ideals. 

But in order to do this, we must have a clear and correct compre- 
hension of the fundamental laws of life and society and we must be 
able to understand the mighty forces that are carrying us onward to 
improvement or decay. The real fact is that the Giant of Civilization 



BBTTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 27 

is marching onward and upward with a "fool killer" in each hand, 
and the slaughter of the weak, the incompetent, the inefficient, is 
something frightful and indeed heart rending. 

But we cannot stay the cruel blows by multiplying abortive laws 
upon our statute books or engaging in reckless criticisms of our 
Courts and our system of government. Neither can we improve con- 
ditions by fanning the flames of passion and working the people into 
a state of hysteria. This only results in making the people discon- 
tented and still more miserable. 

I agree with Prof. Jordan when he says: 

" The history of human thought is filled with the rise 
of doctrines, laws and generalizations, not drawn from 
human experiences and not sanctioned by science. The 
attempt to use these ideas as a basis of human action, 
has been a fruitful source of Human Misery." 

The brilliant Lecky truthfully pictured modern conditions when 
he said: 

"The constantly increasing tendency, whenever any 
abuse of any kind is discovered, is to call upon Parlia- 
ment to make a law to remedy it. Every year the net- 
work of regulation is strengthened; every year there is 
an increasing disposition to enlarge and multiply the 
functions, powers and responsibilities of government. 
I should not be dealing sincerely with you if I did not 
express my opinion that this tendency carries with it 
dangers even more serious than those of the opposite 
exaggeration of a past century ; dangers to character by 
sapping the spirit of self reliance and independence, 
dangers to liberty by accustoming men to the constant 
interference of authority and abridging in innumerable 
ways the freedom of action and choice." 

In my opinion we should turn our attention to teaching the peo- 
ple the lesson of self-reliance and self-control. We should teach 
them to educate, improve and reform themselves. We should teach 
them to form habits of industry, sobriety and frugality. We should 
teach them to obtain correct information before acting and then adopt 
reason as their guide, to the end that they may become strong and 
efficient and thereby better fit themselves for the struggle of existence 
under our modern complex social conditions and rapidly changing 
industrial development. In this direction lies the path of True Reform. 



28 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

WE ARE IN A VERY LARGE WORLD 

Let me suggest to you, my dear Col. Roosevelt, that we are living 
in a very large world, which is filled to overflowing with all kinds of 
conflicting theories, and it is no easy task for any man to pick out 
the true from the false, the sound from the unsound. 

Therefore, we should be charitable in our opinions. We should 
cultivate the mental attitude of intellectual hospitality. We can, 
however, always be sure of one thing and that is this: No man has 
a corner on either wisdom or virtue. There is no monopoly in the 
republic of ideas — no trust in the world of morals. 

The storehouses of wisdom and virtue are open to all alike; 
everybody is at liberty to partake to the limit of their ability and 
capacity. If a man has not a liberal supply of talent, wisdom and 
virtue, he has no one to blame for it except himself, and possibly 
nature, who fixed his mental and moral limitations. He certainly can 
not lay the blame upon the government, or upon the people's repre- 
sentatives, as is so often done. 

Nature distributes her gifts with a secret and subtle hand, and 
we can no more change nature's distribution of talents, wisdom and 
virtue by law, than we can change her distribution of physical form 
and beauty. 

We are fond of saying that all men are created free and equal, 
but the fact is there are only two periods in life when men are equal. 
The first is when they enter this world through the gate of Eternity; 
the second is when they leave this world through the same gate. Be- 
tween the two Eternities they are all unequal, because nature has 
made them so. 

"There is equal voice only among the dumb; equal 
minds only among the fools; equal success only among 
the failures, and equal strength only among the dead." 

All that any man can ask of the government is to give him equal 
protection and equal opportunity. His success or failure will then 
depend upon himself. 

I wish to again assure you that I sincerely regret that I cannot 
agree with you upon these questions under consideration. I regret 
that you have embraced doctrines which I cannot accept, but I would 
not surrender my honest convictions upon these fundamental ques- 
tions of government, for all of the offices within the gift of the Ameri- 
can people. I do not need the offices, but I do need my self-respect. 




COL. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 29 

I do not need public applause, which at best is as fleeting as the dew 
drops, but I do need an abiding consciousness that I have been true to 
myself, true to my honest convictions, and that I have never stained 
my soul with the crime of hypocrisy. In other words, I would rather 
be a martyr to the cause of truth, than a king on the throne of Error. 
With kind regards, I am. 

Sincerely your friend, 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 



COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S REJOINDER 

287 Fourth Avenue, New York 
Office of Theodore Roosevelt, July 11, 1911. 
My dear Mr. Betts: 

I thank you for your long and interesting letter, both for what it 
contains and the way it is written. With much that you say I of 
course entirely agree, although I must also say that I do not withdraw 
the opinions I expressed in my former letter. 
With all good wishes, 
Sincerely yours, 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT A 
NECESSITY 

So long as we have manhood suffrage, so long as we balance the 
head of the illiterate against the head of the intelligent and educated, 
so long as we balance the head of the fool against the head of the 
trained, experienced and enlightened statesman; so long as we balance 
the empty head of the boy of twenty-one against the head of the po- 
litical sage and philosopher with half a century of accumulated wis- 
dom, just so long must we have legislation and government by repre- 
sentatives — by representatives chosen on account of their standing, 
experience, character and ability, as well as their training, fitness and 
skill for the particular duties which they will be called upon to per- 
form. These representatives must be selected by the masses, who, if 
it were not physically impossible for them to act for themselves, which 
it is, have neither the training, the knowledge or the capacity to en- 
gage in the complicated and technical conduct of the details of legis- 
lation and of government. 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 
Speech at Lyons, October 9, 1910. 



30 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION; 

AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY 

vs. 
A PURE OR DIRECT DEMOCRACY 

The quotations presented in this chapter, giving the thoughts, 
opinions, arguments and conclusions of distinguished pohtical philoso- 
phers, scholars, historians, statesmen and students of the science of 
government, past and present, will be of interest to every student of 
political and governmental history and will shed much light upon the 
two systems of government known as a representative democracy, 
and a pure or direct democracy. 

It will be observed, that not only the enlightened statesmanship 
of the world, but the scholarship as well, are on the side of a repre- 
sentative democracy as against a pure democracy. History, experi- 
ence, common sense and the laws of nature are also on the side of a 
representative democracy as against a pure democracy. 

A pure democracy is analogous to life in the most simple, un- 
organized protoplasmic stage. 

A representative democracy is analogous to life in the most 
highly organized, perfectly developed and efficient stage. 

We invite the reader's attention to this array of high and dis- 
tinguished authorities. 

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A REPUBLIC 

Charles Pickney, speaking in favor of the adoption of the con- 
stitution, said: 

"The doctrine of representation is the fundamental of a repub- 
lic." 

THE RULE OF REASON 

Reason has a natural empire, we resist it, but it triumphs over 
our resistance; we persist in error for a time, but we always have to 
return to it. 

MONTESQUIEU. 
Spirit of the Law. 

NOT A PURE DEMOCRACY 

This country is a representative country and not a pure democracy. 
The latter would be unworkable in a country of this magnitude. 
Except with regard to fundamental questions, or matters compar- 
atively simple, it is impractical for the electorate to directly express 
its views. 

FORMER GOV. CHARLES E. HUGHES. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 31 

NOT SO BAD AS A NATION 

As a Nation we are not as bad as we declare ourselves to be. 
Individual reputations are being talked up by talking down others. 
Men seem possessed to establish their own individual virtue as if they 
had been charged with its absence. 

JOB E. HEDGES. 
Common Sense in Politics, 
p. 240. 



THE ONLY GOOD GOVERNMENT 

In a large society inhabiting an extensive country, it is impos- 
sible that the whole world should assemble to make laws. The first 
necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of 
the most wise and good. There is no good government but what is 
Republican. 

JOHN ADAMS. 
Thoughts on Government. 



THE LAW 

The law, therefore, to a certain extent, should correct national 
tendencies. It should be loved a little because it is felt to be just, 
feared a little because it is severe, hated a little because it is to a cer- 
tain degree out of sympathy with the prevalent temper of the day, 
and respected because it is felt to be necessary. 

EMILE FAGUET. 
The Cult of Incompetence, p. 69. 



AMERICAN DEMOCRACY vs. MOBOCRACY 

The clamor now is heard that the organization of American 
Democracy, such as the Republic has known for a century and a 
quarter, must be altered, torn asunder, under the pretense that the 
people do not govern with sufficient directness. Let us hope that the 
clamor is but a passing ebullition of feeling. 

Democracy, Yes! Mobocracy never. And toward mobocracy 
we are now bidden to wend our way. The shibboleths of the clamor, 
the Initiative, the Referendum and the Recall, put into general prac- 
tice, as the evangelists of the new social gospel would fain have them, 
are nothing more nor less than the madness of Democracy. 

ARCHBISHOP IRELAND. 
Speech Council Bluffs, 
Iowa, Oct. 11-1911 



32 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

EXTENT OF COUNTRY 

Extent of country, in my conception, ought to be no bar to the 
adoption of a good government. No extent on earth seems to me too 
great, provided the laws be wisely made and executed. The principles 
of representation and responsibility, may pervade a large, as well as 
a small territory. 

EDMUND RANDOLPH. 

Speech in Virginia Convention, June 6, 1788. 



CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS 

To what purpose are limitations committed to writing, if those 
limits may at any time be passed by those intended to be restrained? 
The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited 
powers is abolished if those limits do not confine the persons on whom 
they are imposed. 

JOHN MARSHALL. 
From Opinion in Marhury vs. Madison, 
1 Cranch, 137. 



THE PERFECT RULER 

To discover the perfect ruler for human society we must find a 
superior intelligence who has seen all the passions of man but has ex- 
perienced none of them, who has had no sort of relations with our 
nature but who knows it to the core, whose happiness is not dependent 
on us, but who wishes to promote our welfare, in a word, one who 
aims at a distant renown, in a remote future, and who is content to 
labor in one age and to enjoy in another. 

ROUSSEAU. 
Social Contract. 



NOT KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS 

One thing is very certain, that the doctrine of representation in 
government was not known to the Ancients. Now the knowledge and 
practice of its doctrine is, in my opinion, essential to every system, that 
can possess the qualities of freedom, wisdom and energy. 

To control the power and conduct of the legislatures by an over- 
ruling constitution, was an improvement in the science and practice of 
government reserved to the American states. 

JAMES WILSON. 
Speech in Pennsylvania Convention, Nov. 26, 1787. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 33 

NO EQUALITY IN MINDS 

Whatever efforts a people may make, they will never succeed in 
reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level; and even if 
they unhappily attain that absolute and complete depression, the 
inequality of minds would still remain, which coming directly from 
the hand of God, will forever escape the laws of man. 

DE TOCQUEVILLE. 
Democracy in America p. I46. 

FATHERS OF THE REPUBLIC 

It becomes us. Sir, in my Tiumble opinion, to approach this sub- 
ject with the profoundest reverence for this Constitution, as the work 
of that illustrious body of patriots and statesmen, who seem to have 
been raised up by Providence, at that peculiarly eventful period, to 
guide by their eminent wisdom and exalted public virtue, the coun- 
cils of that convention, the result of whose deliberations was to fix 
the future destinies of this great empire of freedom. They were men 
originally highly gifted by nature and deeply versed in political know- 
ledge; they had been educated in the principles of civil liberty, and 
well understood the temper and genius of their country, its interests, 
and the spirit of its institutions. For sound views of the theory of 
government, just application of political principles and as the purest 
models of eloquence, the public papers of the statesmen of our revolu- 
tion have never been excelled and will long remain unrivalled. 

HENRY R. STORRS. 
Speech in House of Representatives, Feb. 17, 1826. 



SELF-CONTROLLED REPRESENTATIVE 
DEMOCRACY 

The Republican Party of New York, in State Convention as- 
sembled, hereby declares its faith in those fundamental principles of 
government established in the United States by the adoption of the 
Constitution. 

We believe that this is a self-controlled representative democracy, 
as illustrated by the entire course of our national experience. 

We believe that order is the prerequisite of progress, and that this 
national tradition must not be destroyed nor principle be sacrificed 
to opportunism. 

We believe that the guarantees of the Bill of Rights, as incor- 
porated in the Constitution of the United States for the protection of 
each citizen, even if threatened by a temporary majority, shall be 
forever preserved. 

NEW YORK STATE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM. 
Adopted at Rochester, April 10, 1912. 



34 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

A BREEDER OF CORRUPTION 

In small places, where every body knows each other, direct 
nomination is not attended with any difficulties; but in the large 
cities the electors are so numerous that they do not know the good 
candidates any more than the bad ones, — the latter are even better 
known. This system, therefore, has in no way, curtailed the power 
of the wire pullers, nor encouraged candidates of a superior stamp to 
court the suffrages of the primaries. Fraud and corruption flourish 
in the direct primaries as elsewhere. Corruption is even more rife in 
them. 

OSTROGORSKI. 
Works, Vol. 11, p. 532. 



A FUNDAMENTAL POLITICAL PRINCIPLE 

Another fundamental among political principles which experience 
has confirmed is representative government. There is no doubt that 
an enthusiastic and able propoganda against representative govern- 
ment by appealing to the sentiment called the people's will has made 
great progress. There is no doubt that it has discredited state legis- 
latures and Congress. It has led in many states to the initiative, the 
referendum and the recall. It claims, in its extreme phase, that 
government can only be popular when the actual meeting of the mob 
takes the place of the deliberations of the legislative body and deci- 
sions of the courts. 

The man who acts as his own lawyer loses his property; as his 
own doctor, loses his life; as his own architect, lives in an unsanitary 
building; as his own engineer, drives over a bridge which falls into a 
stream. As life grows more intense in its demands upon people in 
every department of work, they must concentrate their minds on 
their industry if they would succeed in their chosen pursuit. The 
people know that with these conditions, and with the greatest intel- 
ligence among the masses, to provide measures of government and 
principles of justice is absolutely impossible. 

They can select men, their neighbors, those who are willing to 
serve and who are able to do this work for them, and then judge of 
the capability and the intelligence of their representatives, as they do 
of the work of their engineer and their lawyer and their doctor, by 
results. It is to the credit of our institutions that while every other 
country has changed in its fundamentals, we live after one hundred 
and twenty-five years under the same constitution, practically un- 
changed and with a liberty and prosperity and promise for the future 
which are magnificent testimonies to the wisdom of the fathers. 

SENATOR CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. 
Speech at Republican Club, New York, 
April 7,1911. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 35 

ADVANCED FORM OF STATE EVOLUTION 

Thus modern democratic national states represent the most 
advanced form of state Evolution. With ethnic and geographic 
unity they have a strong national basis; and, by combining local 
self-government and representation, they secure that adjustment 
of liberty and sovereignty which, even over large areas, may subserve 
the interests of both individual and society. 

PROF. RAYMOND G. GETTELL, 
Trinity College. 
Political Science, p. 64- 



MODERN AND ANCIENT GOVERNMENT 

Representative government is comparatively modern. Direct 
government of the democratic kind is ancient: and the latter was de- 
liberately discarded for the former by the founders of our government. 
The framers of the Constitution were entirely familiar with the failure 
of direct democracy in a government of numerous population, and they 
were influenced by their knowledge of that failure in devising our own 
structure of representative government. 

HON. SAMUEL W. McCALL. 
Speech at Cedar Point, Ohio, July 12, 1911. 



HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON AGREED 

But when, scorning the arts of the demagogue, we look the facts 
squarely in the face, we must recognize frankly that in government 
there are certain functions which the people can not perform directly 
and which, therefore, in a popular government must be performed 
by representatives or delegates chosen by the people. And it is a 
fact that what the people do through their representatives or dele- 
gates, the people themselves do. If we can not have democratic 
government except on condition that all functions of government 
shall be exercised by the people themselves, democratic government 
becomes an impossibility. This was clearly recognized by the founders 
of the Republic. Indeed, the greatest achievement of the Consti- 
tutional Convention was the formulation of a plan of representative 
government in contrast with the system of direct popular government 
which was practiced in the republics of the ancient world. And 
Hamilton and Jefferson alike agreed that this devise of government 
by the people acting, not in person, but through their representatives, 
was the principal safe-guard of the rights of citizens and the firmest 
guarantee of the continuance of the Republic. 

JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN. 
Speech at Utica, Feb. 5, 1909. 



36 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION" 

THE LEADING RAMS 

Speaking of the impossibility of the sociaHstie democracy, Dr. 
A. Schaffle, the distinguished German author says: 

"The leading rams of the modern democratic flock whom all 
the sheep follow would be the sole actual legislators, rulers and ad- 
ministrators, and would in all probability not be of the best and most 
capable, but the most thorough-going demagogues, the most success- 
ful flatterers of the many-headed monarch." 
Social Democracy, p. 123. 



GOVERNMENT BY TUMULT 

The civic assemblies grew larger, louder and less orderly; the 
business was carried on after a more passionate and tumultuous 
fashion, because the guidance of a superior spirit was absent, and 
because the entire multitude accordingly took a more direct part in 
the proceedings, and unhesitatingly displayed its momentary feelings 
— its favor and disfavor, its satisfaction and impatience. 

CURTIES. 
History oj Greece, Vol. 3, p. 92. 



^ GOVERNMENT BY REPRESENTATIVES 

For let it be agreed that a government is Republican in proportion 
as every member composing it has equal voice in the direction of its 
concerns, (not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond 
the limits of a city or a small township), but by representatives chosen 
by himself and responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring 
to the test of this canon every branch of our constitution. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
Works, Vol. 15, p. 33. 



THE EVILS OF POPULAR ELECTIONS 

So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, 
though those of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but 
faction, bribery, bread and stage plays to debauch them. We have 
the inflammation of liquor superseded, a fury hotter than any of them. 
There the contest was only between citizen and citizen, yet Rome 
was destroyed by the frequency of elections, and the monstrous ex- 
pense of an unremitted courtship to the people. 

EDMUND BURKE. 
Thoughts on Discontent. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 37 

THE UNITED STATES SYSTEM 

The system of government in the United States and in the several 
states is distinguished from a pure democracy in this respect, that the 
will of the people is made manifest through representatives chosen by 
them to administer their affairs and make their laws, and who are en- 
trusted with defined and limited powers in that regard, whereas, the 
idea of a democracy, non-representative in character, implies that 
the laws are made by the entire people acting in a mass-meeting or at 
least by universal and direct vote. Representation is one of the very 
essentials of a Republican form of government. 

BLACK'S CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. 
Page 28. 

A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT 

By the Constitution, a republican form of government is guar- 
anteed to every State in the union, and the distinguishing feature of 
that form is the right of the people to choose their own officers for 
governmental administration and pass their own laws in virtue of the 
legislative power reposed in representative bodies, whose legitimate 
acts may be said to be those of the people themselves, but, while the 
people are thus the source of political power, their governments, 
National and State, have been limited by written constitutions, and 
they have thus thereby set bounds to their own power, as against the 
sudden impulses of mere majorities. 

CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER. 
U. S. Supreme Court, 
Duncan, 139 U. S., U9. 



ORIGIN OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERN- 
MENT 

I begin with the Origin and Nature of the Representative 
System. This is an invention of modern times. In antiquity there 
were Republics and Democracies, but there was no Representative 
System. In Athens the people met in public Assembly, and directly 
acted for themselves on all questions, foreign and domestic. This was 
possible there, as the state was small and the Assembly seldom ex- 
ceeded 5,000 citizens — a large town-meeting or mass-meeting as we 
might call it — not inaptly termed, "that fierced emocratie of Athens." 

The American System, though first showing itself in Massachu- 
setts and Virginia, found its earliest practical exemplification a few 
years later, in the Constitution of the United States. 

CHARLES SUMNER. 
Works, Vol. 3, p. 232-2U 



38 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

TRUE AND FALSE DEMOCRACY 

Jealousy of power honestly gained and justly exercised, envy of 
attainment or possession, are characteristics of the mob, not of the 
people; of a democracy which is false, not of a democracy which is 
true. False democracy shouts, Every man down to the level of the 
average. True democracy cries. All men up to the height of their 
fullest capacity for service and achievement. The two ideals are 
everlastingly at war. The future of this nation as the future of the 
world, is bound up with the hope of a true democracy that builds 
itself on Liberty. 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. 
True and False Democracy p, 16. 



REPRESENTATION OUR INVENTION 

They, (the Ancients) knew no medium between a Democracy, 
(the only pure Republic, but impracticable beyond the limits of a 
town) and an abandonment of themselves to an aristocracy or a 
tyranny independent of the people. It seems not to have occurred 
that where the citizens cannot meet to transact their business in person, 
they alone have the right to choose the agents who shall transact it, 
and that in this way a republican government of a second grade of 
purity may be exercised over any extent of country. 

The full experiment of a government democratical, but repre- 
sentative, was and still is reserved for us. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
Works, Vol. 16, p. 65. 



GOVERNMENT BY SHOUTS 

The manner of their election was as follows: The people being 
called together, some selected persons, were locked up in a room near 
the place of election, so contrived that they could neither see or be 
seen, but could only hear the noise of the assembly without, for they 
decided this, as most other affairs of moment, by the shouts of the 
people. This done, the competitors were not brought in and presented 
altogether but one after another by lot, and passed in order through 
the assembly without speaking a word. Those who were locked up 
had writing tablets with them in which they recorded and marked 
each shout by its loudness, without knowing in favor of which candi- 
date each of them was made, but merely that they came first, second, 
third, and so forth. He who was found to have the most and loudest 
acclamations was declared senator duly elected. 

PLUTARCH. 
Lives, p. 92. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION" 39 

IT IS THE MODERN METHOD 

Representation is the modern method by which the will of a great 
multitude may express itself through an elected body of men for 
deliberation in law making. It is the only practicable way by which a 
large country can give expression to its will in deliberate legislation. 
Give the suffrage to the people, let lawmaking be in the hands of their 
representatives, and make the representatives responsible at short 
periods to the popular judgment, and the rights of men will be safe, 
for they will select only such as will protect their rights and dismiss 
those who, upon trial, will not. True representation is a security 
against wrong and abuse in lawmaking. 

JOHN RANDOLPH TUCKER. 



PURE vs. REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY 

Democracies are of two kinds. — pure, or direct, and represen- 
tative, or indirect. A pure democracy is one in which the will of the 
state is formulated and expressed directly and immediately through 
the people acting in their primary capacity. A pure democracy is 
practical only in small states, where the voting population may be 
assembled for purposes of legislation and where the collective needs of 
the people are few and simple. In large and complex societies, where 
the legislative wants of the people are numerous, the very necessities 
of the situation make government by the whole body of citizens a 
physical impossibility. 

PROF. GARNER. 
Introduction to Political Science. 



GOVERNMENT BY SELECTED INTELLI- 
GENCE 

A simple or pure democracy mixes ignorance and intelligence, 
folly and wisdom, vice and virtue, inexperience and experience, dema- 
gogy and statesmanship altogether in hopeless confusion and the bad 
neutralizes the good and pulls both the intellectual and moral standard 
down to the dead level of mediocrity, but when we engraft upon a pure 
democracy the representative system, we then enable the people to 
pick out men of character, experience, wisdom and statesmanship, 
wherever they can be found, and assemble them in a representative 
body — in a legislature or a convention, where they can act for the 
public good. 

A pure democracy, when reduced to the last analysis, means 
government by collective ignorance, while a representative democracy 
means government by selected intelligence. 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 



40 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

WHERE LIBERTY IS FOUND 

Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of 
Democracy, but in moderate governments. As long as offices are open 
to all men, and no constitutional rank is established, it is pure Repub- 
licanism. But if we incline too much to Democracy, we shall soon 
shoot into a monarchy. 

The idea of introducing a monarchy or an aristocracy into this 
country by employing the influence and force of the government, con- 
tinually changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things 
that none but madmen could meditate. ***** xhe fabric 
of the American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent 
of the People; and the streams of national power ought to flow im- 
mediately from that pure and original fountain of all legitimate au- 
thority. 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 
Works, Vol l,p. 4ii 



POLITICAL RELIGION OF THE NATION 

I know the American people are much attached to their govern- 
ment. I know they would suffer much for its sake. I know they would 
endure evils long and patiently before they would ever think of ex- 
changing it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be 
continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in 
their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the ca- 
price of a mob, the alienation of their affections for the government is 
the natural consequence, and to that sooner or later it must come. 

Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected. The 
question recurs, how shall we fortify against it? The answer is sim- 
ple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to 
his posterity, swear by the blood of the revolution never to violate in 
the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their 
violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support 
of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitu- 
tion and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and 
his sacred honor; let every man remember that to violate the law is 
to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own 
and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by 
every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. 
Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be 
written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs. Let it be 
preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced 
in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion 
of the nation. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
Speech at Springfield, 1832. , 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEKS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 41 
ORDERLY PROGRESS 

In my judgement the type of democracy should be peace, moder- 
ation, enfranchisement and beneficence. As to the radicalism which 
is imputed to me, I have only to say now, as I have often said to you 
heretofore, that the tendencies of American institutions to the amelior- 
ation of laws and the improvement of society, have been my study; I 
aim to allow them free operation. I am in favor only of progress by 
advancement, peaceful and lawful, not by subverting in order to build 
anew. 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 
Works, Vol. 3, p. 415. 



BACK TO THE CHAOS OF SAVAGERY 

Society is stable when the wants of its members obtain as much 
satisfaction as, life being what it is, common sense and experience 
show may be reasonably expected. Mankind, in general, care very 
little for forms of government or ideal considerations of any sort; 
and nothing really stirs the great multitude to break with custom 
and incur the manifest perils of revolt except the belief that misery 
in this world or damnation in the next, or both, are threatened by the 
continuance of the state of things in which they have been brought 
up. But when they do attain that conviction, society becomes as 
unstable as a package of dynamite, and a very small matter will 
produce the explosion which sends it back to the chaos of savagery. 

THOMAS H. HUXLEY. 
Social Diseases and Worse Remedies. 



FOR THE IDLE AND THE COMMON 

This is a direct popular government of the people, with all that 
it carries in its train, — a multitude of projects started at public 
meetings, many assemblages and manifestations in the street. In 
all of this there is nothing which could be less attractive and more 
impracticable for the cultivated and busy classes. In our modern 
civilization, the daily occupation, the family and society absorb 
almost all our time. For this reason such a regime of Direct admini- 
stration suits only the idle and common. The others will not try to 
make themselves fit conditions suitable only for the coarse man of 
no family and without affiliations having no occupation or standing, 
living in an unsettled fashion, of a vociferous tendency, strong of arm, 
thick-skinned and unbending, expert in the street scuffle and for 
whom force constitutes the greatest argument. 

TAINE. 
La Revolution, Vol. 6, p. 161. 



42 BETTS-ROOSEVEI^T LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

MATTER OF ANTIQUARIAN CURIOSITY 

For the sake of making clear what follows, I will venture to re- 
capitulate what was said in an earlier chapter as to the three forms 
which government has taken in free countries. 

First come primary assemblies, such as those of the Greek Re- 
publics of antiquity, or those of the early Teutonic tribes, which have 
survived in a few Swiss Cantons. 

The people met, debated current questions, decided them by its 
vote, chose those who were to carry out its will. 

Such a system of direct popular government is possible only in 
small communities, and in this day of large states has become a matter 
rather of antiquarian curiosity than of practical moment 

JAMES BRYCE. 
American Commonwealth, Vol. 2, pp. 278-80. 

POLITICAL PATENT MEDICINE MEN 

Conditions in the United States to-day are singularly Hke those 
which have attracted the favorable attention of a certain class of 
persons who are forced to make a living by their wits. The vendor of a 
patent medicine assures his hearers that they have at the moment some 
distressing symptoms, namely symptoms which every one has at one 
time or another. His hearers, assenting, easily accept the inference 
that they are seriously diseased and in need of instant relief. That 
relief can only be had from the contents of the bottle or package 
which they may purchase of him at a satisfactory price. Just this 
performance is being enacted to-day all over the United States by 
itinerant political patent medicine men. They tell all those who will 
listen that we are politically diseased and that our political life is in 
danger; our symptoms are those dreadful manifestations which, to 
some extent and in some degree, every human being and every form 
of society feel now and then. But the cure, the certain, sure speedy 
cure, is to purchase the bottle or the package which contains the po- 
litical patent medicine that the particular political patent medicine 
man has for sale. His plausible story wins enough support to gain him 
a livelihood and to keep his name in active prominence before the pub- 
he. 

We are to-day infested with these political patent medicine men. 
Ignorant of ordinary laws of political and social growth, or defying 
them, they press upon us the odd and curious nostrums of their own 
making which are to cure all our evils, to abolish poverty, to do away 
with injustice, and to bring about that happy and blissful Utopia of 
which certain types of men with nothing useful to do habitually 
dream. 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. 
Speech at Rochester Republican 
Convention, April 10, 1912. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 43 

PROTECTS THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES 

The defense is properly set up for a republican form of govern- 
ment with a division of powers, that it protects the right of minorities. 
The majority of the people may not directly attack the interests of 
the minority. Yet in the use of the initiative, the referendum and 
the recall, what is seen? The minority often absolutely controls the 
majority. Indeed it seems to be assumed that this is their right. 

Men like Washington, Lincoln, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and 
John C. Calhoun were not the products of any political system in 
which bodies of mediocre men with hobbies robbed the legislature of 
its dignity and authority and subjected executive, legislative and 
judicial officers to the fear of recall when they pursued a course dis- 
tasteful to some faction of the electorate. Only timid, shambling, 
ineffective men can come out of a system which strips pubhc office of 
character and authority and makes it directly subservient to popular 
whims. 

PROFESSOR OBERHOLTZER. 
Referendum in America. 

THOSE WHO SEE FACTS AND THOSE WHO 

SEE VISIONS 

Those who are so intemperately appealing to the people to take 
over the direct management of their government, with its multiplicity 
of detail and difficulty, the successful operation of which demands 
concentration of effort and thoroughness of application, are preparing 
the way for future mischief. They are advocating a political creed 
alluring to the imagination, but utterly impossible of successful realiz- 
ation, and which, if adopted, will lead us more and more into the do- 
main of the impracticable, with political chaos or political despotism 
as the ultimate result. It is the old contest between idealism and 
stubborn, matter-of-fact reality. It is the story of the philosopher's 
stone over again — the dream of transmuting all the metals into gold — 
the hunt for the master key that will open all locks, however different 
in size and shape — the problem of fitting square pegs into round holes 
— the puzzle of how to eat one's cake and have it — the search for the 
chimera of perpetual motion — the quest for the mythical pot of gold 
at the foot of the rainbow — and all the impossible undertakings which 
have vexed men's souls and turned their brains and filled the lunatic 
asylums since mankind was divided into those who see facts and those 
who see visions. Finally, this latest delusion of having everybody 
drive the horses and everybody ride in the coach at the same time must 
share the fate of all the others, for it is now, as it has always been, 
that the pursuit of the unattainable is the most profitless of human 
occupations. 

SENATOR GEORGE SUTHERLAND. 
Speech, House of Representatives, July 11, 1911. 



44 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

THE RAW DEMAGOGUE 

Many excellent persons believe apparently that beneficient re- 
sults can be obtained by certain proposed alterations in the Constitu- 
tion, often, I venture to think, without examination of the history 
and theory of government and without measuring the extent or 
weighing the meaning of the changes which are urged upon us. But 
it is also true that every one who is in distress, or in debt, or discon- 
tented, now assails the Constitution, merely because such is the present 
passion. 

Every raw demagogue, every noisy agitator, incapable of con- 
nected thought and seeking his own advancement by the easy method 
of appealing to the envy, malice, and all-uncharitableness — those 
lovely qualities in human nature which so readily seek for gratifica- 
tion under the mask of high sounding and noble attributes — all such 
people now lift their heads to tear down or remake the Constitution. 

HENRY CABOT LODGE. 
Speech at Raleigh, N. C, Nov. 28, 1911. 



RESPONSIBILITY MUST BE LOCATED 

Members of the Legislature of the different states are the agents 
and direct representatives of the people, and if it be true that as a 
whole they are incompetent, unworthy and corrupt it would follow 
necessarily that the masses of the people from whom they spring and 
from whom they are selected were also either corrupt or criminally 
indifferent to their interests or liberties. They possess the same char- 
acteristics as the people from whom they have come, and if, after 
repeated trials and selections, the community can not secure an in- 
telligent and honest man to represent it, / should not like to live under 
the laws initiated or adopted by the sovereignty of that people. 

It is a sound governmental principle that political power should 
always be accompanied with responsibility located and identified. 

Where responsibility can not be placed it does not exist, and an 
irresponsible power in government inevitably leads to oppression or 
the loss of liberty. That this responsibility shall not be evaded under 
our representative system of government, the constitution of every 
state requires the legislative record shall disclose the presence or 
absence of each legislator, and his vote and his position on every bill. 
Where in the system of the Initiative, would this sobering knowledge 
of responsibility rest? What right would one citizen have to call 
another to account? Each would represent only himself and with the 
utter lack of responsibility on the part of the law making body, arbi- 
trary and irresponsible power would be enthroned and the reign of 
anarchy commenced. 

GOV. EMMET O'NEAL, of Alabama. 
Editorial Review, Feb. 1912. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 45 

CASTLES OF WOODEN BRICK 

Rousseau does not fail to see that the complete exercise of sov- 
ereign power, according to his notion of it, is impossible; for how are 
the sovereign people all to come together? His answer is that modern 
states are a great deal too large; he would imitate the independent 
Greek city, or what he states it to be. When the people are assembled 
every citizen is equally a magistrate, and all government is in abeyance. 

It was the Frenchman who supplied beforehand, if his country- 
would have appreciated it, an antidote to Rousseau's fictions. Mon- 
tesquieu, with all his faults and irregularities, is the father of modern 
historical research. He held fast to the great truth that serious poli- 
tics can not be constructed in the air by playing with imaginary men 
of any particular race or country and building them up into arbitrary 
combinations, as a child builds castles with wooden bricks. He ap- 
plied himself to the study of political institutions as belonging to 
societies of different historical types, and determined by historical 
conditions. 

SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK. 
History of the Science of Politics, 
Humboldt Library, pp. 31-33. 



WHERE ROOSEVELT GOT HIS CUE 

We may reasonably expect that with the "recall" apphed to our 
elective offices election days will become so numerous that the average 
citizen will not have very much time left for his ordinary duties. 

Neither is it a wild conjecture to assume, if the tendency shown by 
these laws is to prevail, that the referendum will finally be applied to 
the decisions of the courts It might prove to be a very popular 
measure. A demagogue would have a splendid opportunity to expound 
its advantages. He could confidently ask, "Are you not willing to 
trust the people?" In the state of feeling existing against the courts 
among many people all over the country, it would be useless to en- 
deavor to answer the question. 

What a simple procedure it would be to appeal from the decision 
of the Court to the people and have the latter determine whether the 
judgment of the Court should stand as the judgment of the people! 
If answered in the negative a remedy would be immediately available. 
A petition could be circulated, which would find ready signers, to 
recall the judge. This is not a visionary or improbable development 
of the innovations now in progress. In Rome no Roman citizen could 
be condemned to capital punishment until he had had an opportunity 
to submit his case to the people. 

HON. ROBERT W. BONYNGE. 

In Political Innovations, 
Forum, June, 1911, p. 656. 



46 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

PURE DEMOCRACY MEANS OVERTHROW OF 

REPUBLIC 

No thoughtful citizen can fail to realize that great and far reach- 
ing changes in the form of our government as originally established 
are impending and are in actual progress. After a century and a 
quarter of unprecedented natural growth and development under the 
representative form of government, many of the states of the 
union have in recent years adopted radical innovations in that 
system. If the movement now well under way continues to spread 
and finally reaches the National Government the result must ulti- 
naately be the overthrow of the republic and the substitution in its 
place of a pure democracy. Our institutions were not hastily adopted ; 
they should not be thoughtlessly discarded. Are we prepared to make 
the change? 

HON. ROBERT W. BONYNGE. 
Political Innovations, 

Forum, June, 1911, p. 645. 

NOT REFORM BUT ATAVISM 

The restlessness generated by pressure against the conditions of 
existence, perpetually prompts the possessor to try a new position. 
Everyone knows how long continued rest in one attitude becomes 
wearisome — everyone has found how even the best easy chair, at 
first rejoiced in, becomes after many hours intolerable, and change 
to a hard seat, previously occupied and rejected, seems for a time to 
be a great relief. It is the same with incorporated humanity. Having 
by long struggles emancipated itself from the hard discipline of the 
ancient regime, having discovered that the new regime into which it 
has grown, though relatively easy, is not without stress and pains, 
it is impatient with its triumphs and wishes to try another system, 
which other system is in principle, if not in appearance, the same as 
that which during past generations was escaped from with much rejoicing. 

* * * 

Yet, while elevation, mental and physical, of the masses is going 
on far more rapidly than ever before — while the lowering of the 
death-rate proves that the average life is less trying, there swells, 
louder and louder the cry that the evils are so great that nothing 
short of a social revolution can cure them. In presence of obvious 
improvements, joined with that increase of longevity which even 
alone yields conclusive proof of general amelioration, it is proclaimed,, 
with increasing vehemence, that things are so bad that society must 
be pulled to pieces and re-organized on another plan. 

HERBERT SPENCER. 
Political Education and 
Freedom From Bondage. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 47 

A WELL REGULATED DEMOCRACY 

The supporters of the Constitution claim the title of being the 
firm friends of the liberty and the rights of mankind. They say that 
they consider it as the best means of protecting liberty. We, Sir, 
idealize democracy. Those who oppose it have bestowed eulogiums 
on monarchy. We prefer this system to any monarchy because we are 
convinced that it has a greater tendency to secure our liberty and pro- 
mote our happiness. We admire it, because we think it a well regu- 
lated democracy. 

The honorable gentleman has asked if there be any safety or 
freedom, when we give away the sword and the purse. Shall the 
people at large hold the sword and the purse without the interposi- 
tion of their representatives? Can the whole aggregate community act 
personally? I apprehend that every gentleman will see the impossibility 
of this. Must they, then, not trust them to others? And to whom are 
they to trust them but to representatives, who are accountable for 
their conduct. 

JOHN MARSHALL. 
Speech in Virginia Convention, June 10, 1788. 



FATE OF PURE DEMOCRACIES 

So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of govern- 
ment, and so little dependence have they on the humours and tempers 
of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may some- 
times be deduced from them, as any which the mathematical sciences 
afford us. 

The constitution of the Roman repubhc gave the whole legis- 
lative power to the people, without allowing a negative voice either 
to the nobility or consuls. This unbounded power they possessed in 
a collective, not in a representative body. The consequences were: 
when the people, by success and conquest, had become very numerous, 
and had spread themselves to a great distance from the capital, the 
city tribes, though the most contemptible, carried almost every vote; 
they were, therefore, most cajoled by every one that affected pop- 
ularity; they were supported in idleness by the general distribution 
of corn, and by particular bribes, which they received from almost 
every candidate; by this means, they became every day more licen- 
tious, and the Campus Martins was a perpetual scene of tumult and 
sedition; armed slaves were introduced among these rascally citizens, 
so that the whole government fell into anarchy; and the greatest 
happiness which the Romans could look for, was the despotic power 
of the Caesars. Such are the effects of democracy without a repre- 
sentative. 

DAVID HUME. 
The Science of Politics, p. 9. 



48 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

PURE DEMOCRACIES SHORT LIVED 

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure 
democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of 
citizens, who assemble and administer the government, in person, can 
admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. Hence it is that such 
democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, 
have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the 
rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as 
they have been violent in their deaths. 

Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of govern- 
ment, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a per- 
fect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be 
perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions^ 
and their passions. 

A republic, by which I mean a government in which representa- 
tion takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for 
which we are seeking. 

JAMES MADISON. 
Federalist, Letter X. 



POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE FATHERS 

Prerogative and popular rights should be so balanced as to 
protect the nation from tyranny on the one side and from mob rule 
on the other. The different estates of the realm should be so repre- 
sented in the government that each should be able to check excess on 
the part of the other. Support for this doctrine was found in the 
writings of Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero and Tacitus. Montesquieu's, 
adherence to it in opposition to the general current of European 
opinion made his "Spirit of the Laws" more influential in England 
and America than that great work ever was in the author's own 
country. 

Blackstone exhibited this doctrine as the fundamental principle 
of the British constitution, with such a parade of learning as to make 
his conclusion seem indisputable and with such noble resources of 
style that the ''Commentaries" took rank as a literary classic, as. 
well as a law book. The same doctrine eventually received from 
Edmund Burke the most eloquent expression ever given to political 
ideas. It floats in the music of his grandest passages — as when he 
speaks of, 

"That action and interaction which in the natural and in the 
poHtical world, from the reciprocal struggles of discordant powers^ 
draws out the harmony of the universe." 

PROF. HENEY JONES FORD, 

of Princeton University. 
Rise and Growth of American Politics, p. 29. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 49 

FREEDOM OF PUBLIC SERVANTS 

In short, democratic government means freedom, independence — 
combined with genuine responsibility to the people — through the 
entire body politic; for public servants, as well as for their employers; 
for public officials as well as the mass of citizens. Every public servant 
must be carefully selected. He must be held to constant thorough 
responsibility, in some way which will be really effective. But he must 
have freedom; the same freedom that wise administrators give to their 
employees in private employments. In private employments, we 
trust men. We give them our confidence. We find that to be the 
surest way of making them deserve our confidence. There is no at- 
mosphere so certain to make men dishonest and inefficient, as the 
atmosphere of doubt and distrust. 

ALBERT STICKNEY. 
Organized Democracy, p. 69. 



FAVOR EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION 

My Dear Mr. Betts: 

The number of the ^^ Republican" which you have sent me has 
interested me greatly, not only as a triumph of good work, but as an 
evidence that you are in control of a stronghold of right reason. I am 
also naturally glad to find that my general opinions are very similar 
to your own. Your feelings regarding Mr. Roosevelt, as you state 
them, seem almost identical with those which I hold, and your reply 
to him in the correspondence given on page 1 1 seems to me admirable, 
both as regards matter and manner. Like yourself I regard him with 
admiration and gratitude, while regretting several minor features in 
his career. Your attitude, also, throughout the various questions 
incidentally touched upon, commends itself as thoroughly sound and 
sane, and I am glad to see opinions which I hold stated with such 
clearness and cogency; indeed, I can recall no general treatment of 
political questions in recent years which seems to me more likely to 
influence public opinion healthfully. 

Like yourself I am hoping to see a vigorous reaction against the 
multitude of absurd proposals for so-called "reforms" which would 
only increase the evils we have and add to them new ills which, as yet, 
we know not of, and my feeling is that it is just such modes of argu- 
ment as those which you employ that will bring in the "sober second 
thought," on which we must rely for any betterment of the present 
condition of things. 

We are evidently alike in preferring Evolution to Revolution. 

HON. ANDREW D. WHITE 

In a personal Letter to the 

Editor of The Lyons Republican. 



50 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION^ 

ATHENIAN ASSEMBLY A MOB 

Nothing can be more fallacious than to found our political cal- 
culations on arithmetical principles. Sixty or seventy men may be 
more properly trusted with a given degree of power than six or seven. 
But it does not follow that 600 or 700 would be proportionately a 
better depository. And if we carry on the supposition to 6,000 or 
7,000 the whole reasoning ought to be reversed. The truth is that in 
all cases a certain number at least, seems to be necessary to secure 
the benefits of free consultation and discussion, and to guard against 
too easy a combination for improper purposes; as, on the other hand, 
the number ought at most to be kept within a certain limit in order 
to avoid the confusion and intemperance of the multitude. In all 
very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion 
never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian 
citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have 
been a mob. 

JOHN JAY. 
Federalist, Letter LIV. 

HEMLOCK ONE DAY, STATUES THE NEXT 

Thus far I have considered the circumstances which point out 
the necessity of a well constructed Senate, only as they relate to the 
representatives of the people. To a people as little blinded by preju- 
dice or corrupted by flattery as those whom I address, I shall not 
scruple to add that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as 
a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and de- 
lusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought in all 
governments, and actually will in all free governments, ultimately 
prevail over the views of its rulers, so there are particular moments in 
public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion 
or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations 
of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will 
afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these 
critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some tem- 
perate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the mis- 
guided career, and to suspend the blow, meditated by the people 
against themselves, until reason, justice and truth can regain their 
authority over the public mind. 

What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often 
escaped if their government had contained so provident a safe-guard 
against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then 
have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens 
the hemlock on one day, and statues on the next. 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 
Letter LXII, Federalist, World's Great Classics.' 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 51 

TO ACT RIGHTLY REQUIRES STUDY AND 
INVESTIGATION 

Pascal said, that most of the evils of life arose from "man's being 
unable to sit still in a room"; and though I do not go that length, it is 
certain that we should have been a far wiser race than we are if we 
had been ready to sit quiet, — we should have known much better the 
way in which it was best to act when we came to act. 

To act rightly in modern society requires a good deal of previous 
study, a great deal of assimilated information, a great deal of sharp- 
ened imagination, and these prerequisites of sound action require 
much time, and I was going to say, much "lying in the sun," "a long 
period of mere passiveness." Even the art of killing one another, 
which at first particularly trained men to be quick, now requires them 
to be slow. A hasty general is the worst of generals nowadays; the 
best is a sort of Von Moltke, who is passive if any man ever was pas- 
sive; who is, "silent in seven languages." This man plays are strained 
and considerate game of chess with his enemy. 

WALTER BAGEHOT. 
In Physics and Politics, 

Humboldt Library, pp. 182-3. 



COLLECTIVISM IMPOSSIBLE 

There is only one state of affairs under which equality is possible, 
that is, when no one possesses and no one can acquire any thing. But 
surely collectivism is a chimsera, an Utopia, a thing impossible. Cer- 
tainly it is impossible in the sense that in the country which adopts it, 
the source of all initiative will be destroyed. No man will make an 
effort to improve his position, since it must never be improved. The 
whole country will become one of those stagnant pools. The country 
that reforms itself in this way would be conquered at the end of ten 
years by some neighboring people, more or less ambitious. That 
admits of no question; but what does it prove? That collectivism 
is only impossible because it is only possible if established in every 
country at once. We must, therefore, take our problems in order and 
abolish nationalities before we can establish collectivism. 

Thus equality demands the abolition of inheritance, and the 
equality of possessions. Equality of possessions necessitates col- 
lectivism and collectivism requires the abolition of nationalities. 
We are egalitarians, than collectivists, and by logical consequence, anti- 
patriots. 

PROFESSOR EMILE FAGUET, 

of the French Academy. 
The Cult of Incompetence, p. 200-203. 



52 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION" 

CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS IMPER- 
SONAL 

There is prejudice in some minds against the discussion of con- 
stitutional limitations, because lawyers become dry and tedious and 
narrow and technical in discussing them, but they are the declaration 
of those principles of eternal justice upon which civilization rests, 
set up by the people for their own guidance. They are a covenant 
between all the people, and every man, every woman and every child 
in the state. They are a covenant between arbitrary and over- 
whelming power and the weakness of the individual. These constitu- 
tional limitations are necessarily established in the abstract. They 
are impersonal. They are the rules of action which are established 
when men have no particular interest at stake. They are the rules of 
action that are established when there is no strong desire to do injus- 
tice. Universal and impersonal, they constitute the nearest approach 
that humanity has ever come to putting into human law the divine 
rules conformity to which is the requisite of a Christian civilization. 

SENATOR ELIHU ROOT. 

Speech at Rochester Convention, 
April 10, 1912. 



BUILT UPON THE ROCK OF REASON 

The foundations of our government are laid in the principle that 
a people can best govern themselves by selecting from their midst 
representatives who shall act for them and bear the responsibility 
in the broad light of day. And at no time have our people been unable 
to control their destinies under this system. No executive or legisla- 
ture has ever succeeded in ultimately thwarting the popular will. 
If there has seemed to be delay at times, that delay has been generally 
compensated for by an added efficiency in the reform which is ulti- 
mately accomplished. The structure which has sheltered us for so 
many years has froni time to time developed defects, but it has 
sheltered us remarkably well, and its foundations are built upon the 
rock of reason. We are urged to tear the structure down, uproot the 
foundations and substitute for it a scheme of government which is not 
new by any means, but rather is as old almost as human history. It 
was tried in the democracies of antiquity, and in every instance dis- 
aster, anarchy and tyranny resulted. 

HON. JAMES W. WADSWORTH, JR. 
Former Speaker of the New York State Assembly. 
Speech at Rochester Convention, 
April 10, 1912. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 53 

THE CONVENTION SYSTEM 

It is to induce our friends to act upon this important and uni- 
versally acknowledged truth, that we urge the adoption of the con- 
vention system. Reflection will prove that there is no lother way of 
practically applying it. In its application we know there will be 
incidents temporarily painful, but after all those incidents will be 
fewer and less intense with than without the system. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
Springfield, March 1, 18 43. 



NOT A CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY 

A fifth form of democracy is that in which not the law but the 
multitude has the supreme power, and supersedes the law by its 
decrees. This is a state of affairs brought about by the demagogues. 
For in democracies which are subject to the law, the best citizens hold 
the first place and there are no demagogues; but where the laws are 
not supreme, there demagogues spring up. For the people becomes 
a monarch and is many in one; and the many have the power in their 
hands, not as individuals but collectively. 

And the people, who is now a monarch, and no longer under the 
control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway and grows into a 
despot; the flatterer is held in honor; this sort of democracy being 
relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of 
monarchy. 

The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic 
rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the Demos correspond 
to the edicts of the tyrant, and the demagogue is to the one what the 
flatterer is to the other. 

Both have great power, — the flatterer with the tyrant, the dema- 
gogue with the democracies of the kind which we are describing. 
The demagogues make the decrees of the people override the laws, 
and refer all things to the popular assembly. And therefore they grow 
great, because the people has all things in its hands and they hold in 
their hands the votes of the people, who is too ready to listen to them. 
Such a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not a con- 
stitution at all; for where the laws have no authority there is no con- 
stitution. 

The law ought to be supreme over all. So that if democracy be 
a real form of government, the sort of constitution in which all things 
are regulated by decrees is clearly not a democracy in the true sense of 
the word. For decrees relate only to particulars. 

ARISTOTLE. 
The Politics. See Works. 



54 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

THE MASSES 

Self-government is the natural government of man, and for proof, 
I refer to the Aboriginees of our own land. Were I to speculate in 
hypotheses, unfavorable to human liberty, my speculations should 
be founded rather upon the vices, refinements or density of popu- 
lation. Crowded together in compact masses, even if they were 
philosophers, the contagion of the passions is communicated and 
caught, and the effect, too often, I admit, is the overthrow of Liberty. 

HENRY CLAY. 
Works, Vol. 1, p. 245. 



THE DRIVE OF CIVILIZATION 

The drive of modern civilization has forced us to specialization 
along every other line. Why not in affairs of state? If any individual 
should attempt to be his own lawyer, physician and dentist, in these 
days, we should certainly "write him down an ass!" And with reason, 
because we would know he was foredoomed to get his legal affairs 
hopelessly entangled, his health endangered and his teeth in a bad 
state. Why apply any different rule to governmental matters? 
Because they are simpler? And truly that would be ignorant or rash 
to make any such assertion ! The task of the lawyer or doctor assumes 
diminutive proportions|when compared with the tremendous problems 
which any one in a government post must consider and determine. 
The complexity and gravity of the problems we are facing in state and 
nation is so great, that the strong, trained man of experience in govern- 
mental administration must often shrink from the responsibiltiy of 
attempting to solve them, when he^ reflects on the consequences of a 
misstep. Does the mass of untrained and uninformed men regard 
themselves as better able to look out for these important affairs, 
simply because of their great number? It is difficult to see what other 
superior qualifications they possess over the representative of training, 
conscience and education. 

* * * 

In view of our manifest efforts to lessen their power and respon- 
sibility (our representatives) could we expect any thing but a decrease 
in their efficiency and sense of duty? The defects which have troubled 
us in our representative system would seem to be along exactly the 
opposite line to that which we have thus far pursued. 

Let us cease to deprive our representatives of power and responsi- 
bility; let us place real power in their hands and as a corollary hold 
them to a rigid and comprehensive accountability. 

JOHN S. SHEPPERD, JR. 
Representation in Popular Government, 
Forum, June, 1910, pp. 647-8. 



BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 55 

THE IDEAL TYPE OF GOVERNMENT 

From these accumulated considerations, it is evident, that the 
only government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social 
state, is one in which the whole people participate; that any partici- 
pation, even in the smallest public function, is useful; that the partici- 
pation should everywhere be as great as the general degree of improve- 
ment of the community will allow; and that nothing less can be 
ultimately desirable, than the admission of all to a share in the sove- 
reign power of the state. But since all cannot, in a community exceed- 
ing a single small town, participate personally in any but some very 
minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of a 
perfect government must he representative. 

JOHN STEWART MILL. 
Representative Government, p. 66. 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF POLITICS 

To advocate in this twentieth century the importance of study- 
ing the actual working of government may seem like watering a 
garden in the midst of rain. But that this is not the case every one 
must be aware who is familiar with current political literature on such 
living topics as proportional representation, the referendum and 
initiative, and the reform of municipal government. These discus- 
sions are for the most part conducted in the air. They are theoretical, 
treating mainly of what ought to happen, rather than what actually 
occurs; and even when they condescend to deal with facts it is usually 
on a limited scale with very superficial attention to the conditions 
under which the facts took place. The waste of precious efforts at 
reform, from a failure to grasp the actual forces at work, is indeed one 
of the melancholy chapters in our history. Earnest men, overflowing 
with public spirit, sometimes remind one of a woodpecker in Cam- 
bridge, some years ago, who strove loudly for an entire forenoon to 
drill a hole in a copper gutter. Reformers are prone to imagine that 
a new device will work as they intend it to work, and are disappointed 
that it does not do so. They are far too apt to assume that if their 
panacea be adopted mankind will become regenerate; whereas the 
only fair supposition is that men will remain under any system essen- 
tially what they are — a few good, a few bad, and the mass indifferent 
to matters that do not touch their personal interests. All reform 
movements need for criticism a devil's advocate who is not, however, 
believed to be in league with the devil; or rather they need advice 
from people who are really familiar with the actual working of many 
political institutions. In short, they need men with a scientific know- 
ledge of the physiology of politics. 

PROF. A. LAWRENCE LOWELL. 
Political Science Review, 
Feb. 1910. 



56 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

AMERICAN POLITICAL PRINCIPLES 

I will venture to state, in a few words, what I take these Amer- 
ican political principles in substance to be. They consist, as I think, 
in the first place, in the establishment of popular governments on the 
basis of representation. We are at the head of representative popular 
governments. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 
Bunker Hill Oration 



ANTI-RACE SUICIDE 

The greatest social problem of our age is how to stop the constant 
flow of the great Amazon of ignorance, viciousness, inefficiency and 
incompetency which is flooding the country. 

This ever-widening river finds its source in the excessive multi- 
plication of the ignorant and inefficient native and foreign element of 
our society. 

The result is that the country is being flooded with a population 
which, by reason of its incompetency and inefficiency, is unfitted 
for the struggle of life under our modern complex civilization and 
rapidly changing industrial development. 

The time has come when we will have to pay a little more atten- 
tion to race regeneration if we ever expect to solve the great social 
problems that confront us. 

There never was, in the history of the world, such a wide and 
steady demand for efficiency and there never was such a limited supply. 
There never was such an overflow of inefficiency and for it there never 
was such a limited demand. The field for the display of energy, in- 
dustry and talent was never so wide; the field for the display of 
ignorance, incompetency and inefficiency was never so small. 

It is this ever increasing demand for efficiency and the limited 
supply, and this constantly increasing supply of inefficiency and 
limited demand, which is the main factor in creating the social prob- 
lems of our time. 

We are multiplying humanity at a tremendous ratio, from the 
wrong source — from the bottom instead of the top. This is the cause 
of more than half our ills. It is not the system of government that is at 
fault. It is the system of multiplying the wrong kind of people. 

Suppose we were to breed our domestic animals along the same 
line? How long would it be before we would have a crowded domestic 
animal population, the chief bulls and rams (the demagogues) of which 
would be rearing upon their hind legs and demanding a pure democ- 
racy, direct nominations, the initiative, the referendum and the recall 
of the thorough-breds who had distanced them in the race. 

This is exactly what is happening in the human kingdom, 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 



BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 57 

A REPUBLIC DEFINED 

A republic is not founded on virtue: it is founded on the ambi- 
tion of every citizen, which checks the ambition of others; on pride 
restraining pride; and on the desire of ruUng, which will not suffer 
another to rule. Hence are formed laws which preserve as great an 
equality as possible. It is a society where the guests eat at the same 
table with an equal appetite, until a strong and voracious man comes, 
who takes all to himself, and leaves them only the crumbs. 

VOLTAIRE. 
Works, Vol. XXVII, p. 237. 

MOST BARBAROUS JUDGES IN THE WORLD 

It is difficult to weigh, in an exquisitely nice balance, the iniquities 
of the republic of Athens and of the court of Macedon. We still 
upbraid the Athenians with the banishment of Cimon, Aristides, 
Themistocles, and Alcibiades, and the sentences of death upon Phocion 
and Socrates; sentences similar in absurdity and cruelty to those of 
some of our own tribunals. 

In short, what we can never pardon in the Athenians is the execu- 
tion of their six victorious generals, condemned because they had not 
time to bury their dead after the victory, and because they were pre- 
vented from doing so by a tempest. The sentence is at once so ridicu- 
lous and barbarous, it bears such a stamp of superstition and ingrat- 
itude, that those of the Inquisition, those delivered against Urbain 
Grandier, against the wife of Marshal d'Ancre, against Montrin, and 
against innumerable sorcerers and witches, etc., are not, in fact, fool- 
eries more atrocious. 

* * * 

The evil is, in consigning living men to the executioner; living 
men who have won a battle for you; living men, to whom you ought 
to be devoutly grateful. 

Thus, then, are the Athenians convicted of having been at once 
the most silly and the most barbarous judges in the world. 

* * * 

They asked pardon of Socrates after his death, and erected to his 
memory the small temple called Socrateion. They asked pardon of 
Phocion, and raised a statue to his honor. They asked pardon of the 
six generals, so ridiculusly condemned and so basely executed. They 
confined in chains the principal accuser, who, with difficulty, escaped 
from public vengeance. 

Democracy seems to suit only a very small country; and even 
that fortunately situated. Small as it may be, it will commit many 
faults, because it will be composed of men. 

VOLTAIRE. 
Works, Vol. VIII., pp. 76-80. 



58 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIEITED DISCTJSSION 

f LAW, NOT MEN 

He who bids the law rule, may be deemed to bid God and Reason 
alone rule. But he who bids man rule, adds an element of the beast; 
for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of Rulers, 
even when they are the best of men. The law is reason unaffected by 
desire. 

ARISTOTLE. 
The Politics. Worlds Great Classics p. 82. ^^' 

GENUINE REFORM ADVOCATED 

I am in favor of instituting a genuine reform in the interest of the 
people, in the interest of the taxpayers, in the interest of peace and 
business prosperity and in the interests of morality and good govern- 
ment. I would do it by reducing and not increasing elections, and I 
would do it by reducing the number of elections in the state to one in 
four years, and by reducing the number of elections in the nation to 
one in eight years, and then I would have but one session of the State 
Legislature in two years. I would also lengthen the term of all elective 
representative officers so that they would have time to attend to the 
public business instead of spending all their time preparing for a re- 
election. 

By reducing the number of sessions of the legislature we would be 
able to reduce the number of foolish laws, which are enacted to hamper 
individual initiative, to interfere with the natural freedom of the 
people, and curtail the personal liberty of citizens. 

By reducing the number of elections we would reduce enormously 
expense to the taxpayers; we would reduce strife, bitterness, conten- 
tion, bribery and corruption and promote the cause of morality, of 
peace, of prosperity and of good and stable government. 

You may not have thought of it, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that 
when conditions are normal, when there is no strife and contention, 
when every individual is attending to his own business and letting 
everybody else do the same, when everybody is giving his time, his 
thought and his effort to the increasing and upbuilding of his own 
business and there are no elections to interrupt business, prosperity 
advances by leaps and bounds, because under such conditions brains, 
like cream, rise to the top and take command of the situation. 

But when everybody's attention is distracted from business to 
politics, when a large class of our citizens are neglecting their own 
business to engage in politics, and when everybody is in doubt and 
owing to the uncertainty of elections, afraid to invest money or in- 
crease their business obligations, when all is strife and contention, and 
we are all stirred up in the political turmoil incident to elections, then 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 59 

it is that the froth rises to the top and the nimble tongued, leather 
lunged demagogue comes to the front and takes command of the 
situation. 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 

Speech at Lyons, Oct. 9, 1910. 

THE GRAND INSTRUMENT OF CIVILIZATION 

The formation of any plan for Social Organization necessarily 
embraces two series of works, as distinct in their objects as in the 
kind of capacity they demand. One, Theoretical or Spiritual, aims 
at developing the leading conception of the plan — that is to say, the 
new principle destined to co-ordinate social relations — and at forming 
the system of general ideas, fitted to guide Society. The other, 
Practical or Temporal, decides upon the distribution of authority, 
and the combination of administrative institutions best adapted to 
the spirit of the system already determined by the Theoretical labours. 

* * * 

Every social system, whether constructed for a handful of men 
or for several millions, aims definitely at directing all special forces 
towards a general result; for the exercise of a general and combined 
activity is the essence of society. On every other hypothesis, there is 
merely an agglomeration of a certain number of persons upon the 
same soil. It is this which distinguishes human society from that of 
other gregarious animals. 

Hence it follows that the clear and precise ascertainment of the 
active Aim constitutes the first and most important condition of a 
true social order, since this fixes the true meaning of the system. 

On the other hand, a society, however numerous it may be, can, 
just as an individual, propose to itself only one of two possible active 
Aims. These are, a violent action upon the rest of the human race, 
that is to say, conquest; and an action upon Nature, modifying it for 
the advantage of Man, or production. Every society which is not 
definitely organized for one or other of these aims, must he a mongrel 
one, devoid of character. The Military aim characterized the Old 
System, while the Industrial aim characterizes the Modern one. 

The first step needed for Social Reorganization, was, therefore 
to proclaim this new Aim. 

In the earliest infancy of the human mind, Theoretical and 
Practical labours are executed by the same person for all operations; 
yet this circumstance, while rendering the distinction less evident, does 
not effect its reaUty. Soon, however, these two classes of operations 
begin to disengage themselves, as demanding different, and in some 
respects contrasted, capacities and training. As the collective and 
individual intelhgence of the human race develops itself, this separa- 
tion becomes more and more pronounced, and general, and consti- 



60 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

tutes the source of new advances. The degree of a nation's civihza- 
tion, philosophically considered, may be really measured by the 
extent to which Theory and Practice have been separated and har- 
monized.. For the grand instrument of Civilization consists in the 
Division of Labor and the Combination of Efforts. 

AUGUSTE COMTE. 
Scientific Reorganization 

of Society, pages 109, 111, 115. 



AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY 

Representation was a thing unknown in the ancient democracies. 
In those the mass of the people met and enacted laws (grammatically 
speaking) in the first person. Simple democracy was no other than 
the common hall of the ancients. It signifies the form, as well as the 
public principle of the government. As these democracies increased 
in population, and the territory extended, the simple democratical 
form became unwieldly and impracticable; and as the system of 
representation was not known, the consequence was they either 
degenerated convulsively into monarchies, or became absorbed into 
such as then existed. 

It is possible that an individual may lay down a system of prin- 
ciples, on which government may be constitutionally established to 
any extent of territory. This is no more than an operation of the 
mind, acting by its own powers. But the practice upon those prin- 
ciples as applying to the various and numerous circumstances of a 
nation * * * * requires a knowledge of a different kind, and which 
can be had only from the different parts of society. Referring, then 
to the original simple democracy, it affords the true data from which 
government on a large scale can begin. It is incapable of extension, 
not from its principle, but from the inconvenience of its form; and 
monarchy and aristocracy from their incapacity. Retaining, then, 
democracy as the ground, and rejecting the corrupt systems of mon- 
archy and aristocracy, the representative system naturally presents 
itself, remedying at once the defects of the simple democracy as to 
form. 

Simple democracy was society governing itself without the aid of 
secondary means. By engrafting representation upon democracy, 
we arrive at a system of government capable of embracing and con- 
federating all the various interests and every extent of territory and 
population. It is impossible to conceive a system of government 
capable of acting over such an extent of territory, and such a circle 
of interests, as is immediately produced by the operation of repre- 
sentation. It adapts itself to all possible cases. It is preferable to a 
simple democracy even in small territories. Athens, by representa- 
tion, would have out-rivaled her own democracy. 

That which is called government, or rather that which we ought 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 61 

to conceive government to be, is no more than some common center, 
in which all of the parts of society unite. This can not be accom- 
plished by any method so conducive to the various interests of the 
community, as by the representative system. It concentrates the 
knowledge necessary to the interests of the parts, and of the whole. 
It places government in a state of constant maturity. 

THOMAS PAINE. 
Rights of Man. 

THE CRAZE FOR SOMETHING NEW AND 
THE CONSEQUENCES 

In the craze for something new the mind of unrest discards as 
useless everything that is old, neglectful of the truth that whatever is 
old has come through experience and withstood that hardest of tests. 
The joy of imagination is the beauty of living. It should be cherished 
as such, but it is not a function of government. The wisest provision 
of the American constitution was the self-restraint imposed upon the 
electorate, by itself. 

That self -restriction is now the real object of attack from those 
whose minds which are so intemperate politically that their advocacy 
of the abolition of these restrictions is proof of the wisdom of their 
retention. It is not important what concrete form their mental atti- 
tude takes, whether it is in the recall of judges, recall of judicial de- 
cisions, initiative, compulsory legislative referendum, direct nomina- 
tions or anything else. It is the state of mind which advocates these 
concrete things that requires treatment. That state of mind believes 
in rushing to the Legislature for the enactment of statutes to cure 
evils which can never be remedied by legislative enactment. In its 
failure to succeed through legislation, it attacks the organic law, the 
constitution, which protects the individual citizen of America from 
aggression from every direction, on the part of the government, on the 
part of the people or on the part of another individual. No constitu- 
tion can restrain its disordered aspiration. It would cast it away as a 
wornout garment just because it was sick of it, like a peevish child. 
How untrustworthy is such a mind was exhibited at Carnegie Hall, 
when I heard Mr. Roosevelt say that it took six years to amend the 
constitution of the State of New York, when he, an ex-governor, ought 
to know that it takes three, yet the influence of his argument was that 
his audience demanded amendment, and that quickly. 

Every utterance from this socialistic side is a demand for the 
amendment or abrogation of the constitutions of state and nation, 
because restrictions are irksome to its passion. Of course they are 
irksome. They were framed to be irksome to all impetuous minds 
and a check upon half-thought out ideas. 

WM. BARNES, JR. 
Speech at Republican Club, 
New York, May 16, 1912. 



62 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

WHAT WISDOM CREATES FOLLY MAY 
DESTROY 

For after all, there is a public conscience which neither flattery 
nor self interest can subdue. And the salvation of that public con- 
science is in the fact that its innumerable roots reach down and are 
sustained and invigorated by the individual character. If the indi- 
vidual is right the country will not go wrong. 

Relying on this belief I submit to those who care to know it, my 
candid disapproval of certain methods which now seem widely 
favored. I do not believe that pubUc policies should change like 
moving pictures. It will be a costly and hazardous step if the Ameri- 
can people permanently discard the safe and deliberate methods of 
government for the changing and hysterical attractions of pictorial 
statesmanship. 

No policy is good for much which is voted on every day. It 
would be as wise for a farmer to pull his crops up every night to see 
how they get along. Nothing will do well unless tended and given 
time to grow. 

It has taken the American people many years of arduous, bloody 
and expensive labor to reach the spot where they now stand. They 
are rich and great, but no wealth was ever so expansive and no power 
so secure that those who gained them by wisdom and toil could not 
destroy them by idleness and folly. The exactions of virtue are many 
and strict, and its rewards are ample, but by one lapse or blunder the 
fame of a lifetime will fall in a night. You may raise the monuments 
of your industry till they touch the skies: the flame of one match 
will lay them at your feet. If you would continue your power you 
must hold fast to the things that gave it to you. 

HON. FRANK S. BLACK. 
Before The Middlesex Club, 
Boston, April 30th, 1910. 



POLITICAL LEADERS 

Notwithstanding the popular cry against political leaders, the 
fact remains that they are leaders because of their knowledge of polit- 
ical conditions, their knowledge of human nature and their ability to 
think, reason and arrive at correct conclusions. 

They are leaders for these reasons and for the further reason that 
they know how to make friends and retain them. They make friends 
because they have warm hearts and real red blood. They make friends 
by helping others and they retain friends by keeping their word and 
being loyal to their friends and their party. 

Not only this, but leaders are evolved; they cannot be made by 
law. They can only be made by the common consent of the people 
and their political associates. A man becomes a leader by reason of 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 63 

his individuality, his talent, his energy, his sound judgment and his 
common sense and by reason of his ability to read and understand 
human nature and correctly guage public sentiment. He becomes a 
leader by reason of his acquaintances, his friendships, his qualities of 
heart, mind and character, and you can no more legislate a leader's 
friendships away from him, you can no more aboHsh his friendships 
and influence by legislation, than you can legislate one of the planets 
out of the heavens, or darken the sun by an act of the legislature. 

And in this connection I want to say that when a man starts out 
to rail against bosses, it is a sure sign that he has the boss bee buzzing 
busily in his own hat. 

Goethe had this class in mind when he said: 

Don't be disturbed by the barking; 

Remain in your places. 

The barkers eagerly wish for your seats. 

There to be barked at themselves." 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 
Speech at Lyons, Oct. 9, 1910. 

THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT 

Politicians have in all ages, disputed much about the best form of 
government, without considering that each different form may pos- 
sibly be the best in some cases, and the worst in others. 

* * * 

To take the term in its strictest sense, there never existed, and 
never will exist, a real democracy in the world. It is contrary to the 
natural order of things, that the majority of a people should be the 
governors, and the minority the governed. It is not to be conceived 
that a whole people should remain personally assembled to manage 
the affairs of the public; and it is evident, that no sooner are deputies 
or representatives appointed, than the form of the administration is 
changed. 

It may be laid down indeed as a maxim, that when the functions 
of government are divided among several courts, that which is com- 
posed of the fewest persons will, sooner or later, acquire the greatest 
authority; though it were for no other reason than the facility with 
which it is calculated to expedite affairs. 

* * * 

To this it may be added that no government is so subject to civil 
wars and intestine commotions as that of the democratical or popular 
form; because no other tends so strongly and so constantly to alter, 
nor requires so much vigilance and fortitude to preserve it from alter- 
ation. 

* * * 

The more a numerous people are collected together, the less can 
the government assume over the sovereign; the chiefs of a faction 



64 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

may deliberate as securely at their meetings, as the prince in his 
council, and the mob are as readily assembled in the public squares^ 
as the troops in their quarters. It is the advantage of a tyrannical 
government, therefore, to act at great distances ; its force increasing 
with the distance, like that of a lever, by the assistance of a proper 
center. That of the people, on the contrary, acts only by being con- 
centrated; it evaporates and loses itself when dilated, even as gun- 
powder scattered on the ground, takes fire particle by particle, and 

is productive of no effect. 

* * * 

Among the Greeks, whatever the people had to do, they did it 
in person; they were perpetually assembled in public. They inhab- 
ited a mild climate, were free from avarice, their slaves managed their 
domestic business, and their great concern was liberty. As you do not 
possess the same advantages, how can you expect to preserve the same 
privileges? Your climate being more severe, creates more wants; 
for six months in the year your public squares are too wet or cold 
to be frequented; your hoarse voices cannot make themselves heard 
in the open air; you apply yourselves more to gain than to liberty, and 
are less afraid of slavery than poverty. 

* * * 

Did there exist a nation of gods, their government would doubt- 
less be democratical; it is too perfect a form, however, for mankind. 

ROUSSEAU. 
Social Contract. 



A LITTLE SOUND PHILOSOPHY 

Now, lastly, the surplus is passing into a new class, the large 
business speculator, the financier, and trust-man. So far as we can 
yet see, this class is justifying itself far more than the middle class. 
In fifty years the middle classes have not given as much to endow 
education as the millionaires have given in five years. A man with a 
gigantic income cannot spend more than a few percent of it on him- 
self. He must use it for large public enterprises which benefit man- 
kind. To put it in another form, a great dealer has organized a method 
for taxing the community in such a way that they do not notice it 
and if he spends the tax on pubhc improvements or endowments — 
railways, new inventions, or universities — he is an active benefactor 
to the whole community He sponges up the surplus which would 
otherwise be frittered away in ostentation or luxury, and drops it 
where it is a permanent benefit. As a principle we may hate the 
trust-man and multi-millionaire, but he may be a lesser curse than 
the extravagant middle or lower-class man. War is hateful, but it 
may be a lesser curse than rotting in peace. So long as the average 
man shows by his selfish luxury that he is incapable of managing 
wealth, so long the private taxer — who prevents some of the waste — 



BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 65 

will be a positive blessing to the community. The evolution of the 
great money-manager type now going on is a distinct step forward in 
the prevention of waste, and the growth of a better system of expen- 
diture. A million pounds a year scattered over a hundred thousand 
men will be all eaten up in luxuries or lost in folly; spread among a 
thousand men it will only swell their wasteful pride of life; but put 
it in the hands of ten men who have worked for it, and they will spend 
most of it in useful work that will bear fruit. Until the education, 
moral and intellectual, of the average man is on a higher plane, it will 
be well for the surplus wealth to be in the safer hands of those who 
have proved their capacity for avoiding waste. The evolution of 
society is not fitted at present for a wealthy middle class, or a pro- 
letariat domination. 

We have now seen in many directions how great are the changes 
in the constitution of society, which are brought about by a succession 
of small movements, each of which imperceptibly bears its share in 
the change. We see thus how carefully small tendencies should be 
watched; and we learn how needless and often how futile is a violent 
uprooting of institutions instead of a gradual growth. 

Another lesson to note is that every attempt to interfere by 
legislation in the natural working of causes is more likely to do harm 
than good. The long lesson, which it took all the middle ages to 
teach, was that legislative interference with trade always did harm; 
we have come to believe that in a half-hearted way, but we are 
still perpetually longing to tinker society by interfering with natural 
cause and effect. 

W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE. 
Janus, in Modern Life, pp. 62, 63, 64- 

ELECTION OF A PRESIDENT TO TEST THE 
CONSTITUTION 

If ever the tranquillity of the nation is to be disturbed and its 
liberties endangered by a struggle for power, it will be upon the very 
subject of the choice of a President. This is the question that is 
eventually to test the goodness and try the strength of the Constitu- 
tion, and if we shall be able for half a century hereafter to continue 
to elect the chief magistrate of the Union with discretion, modera- 
tion, and integrity we shall undoubtedly stamp the highest value on 
our national character. 

CHANCELLOR KENT. 
See James Ford Rhodes' Historical Essays, p. 219. 

^ FRANKLIN FEARED A MONARCHY 



Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence on 
the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of 
power, and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great 



66 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the 
same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects. * * * 
And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable pre- 
eminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention? 
The infinite abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? 
It will not be the wise, and moderate, the lovers of peace and good 
order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, 
the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish 
pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your government, and be 
your rulers. * * * 

There is scarce a king in an hundred, who would not, if he could, 
follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the people's money, then all 
their lands, and then make them and their children servants forevery**/** 

It will be said, that we do not propose to have kings. I know it; 
but there is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government. 
It sometimes relieves them from aristocratic domination. They had 
rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the ap- 
pearance of equality among citizens; and that they like. I am ap- 
prehensive, therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the government 
of these states may in future end in a monarchy. But this catastrophy 
I think may be delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow the 
seeds of contention, faction and tumult, by making our positions of 
honor places of profit. 

DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
Madison's Journal of Constitutional 
Convention, pages 92-3. 

WASHINGTON FEARED A DICTATOR ON 

THE RUINS OF PUBLIC LIBERTY 

Towards the preservation of yoiir government and the perma- 
nency of your present happy estate, it is requisite, not only that you 
speedily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged 
authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation 
upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of 
assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations 
which will impair the energy of the system; and thus to undermine 
what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you 
may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary 
to fix the true character of governments, as of other human institu- 
tions ; that experience is the surest standard, by which to test the real 
tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in 
changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to 
perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion. 

^ * * * 

r The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 67 

by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissention, which, in different 
ages and countries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is 
itself a frightful despotism. But this leads, at length, to a more formal 
and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, 
gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the 
absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later, the chief of 
some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his com- 
petitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on 
the ruins of public liberty. 

GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
From Farewell Address 

LINCOLN SPOKE WITH THE SPIRIT OF 
PROPHECY 

Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they 
should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to 
nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential 
chair. But such belong not to the family of the lion or the brood of the 
eagle. What? Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, 
a Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten 
path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction 
in adding story to story upon the monuments of fame erected to the 
memory of others. It denie? that it is glory enough to serve under any 
chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however 
illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it 
will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslav- 
ing free men. Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that some men, pos- 
sessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push 
it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And 
when such a dne does, it will require the people to be united with each 
other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, 
to successfully flustrate his design. 

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would 
as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet 
that opportunity being passed, and nothing left to be done in the way 
of building up, he would sit down boldly to the task of pulling down. 
Here, then, is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such a one as 
could not well have existed heretofore. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
Speech at Springfield, 1837. 

THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY 

The immensely increased prominence in political life of ephemeral 
influences, and especially of the influence of a daily press; the immense 
multiplication of elections, which intensifies party conflicts, all tend 



68 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSIOISr 

to concentrate our thoughts more and more upon an immediate issue. 
They narrow the range of our vision, and make us somewhat insensible 
to distant consequences and remote contingencies. It is not easy, 
in the heat and passion of modern political life, to look beyond a par- 
liament or an election, beyond the interest of a party or the triumph 
of an hour. Yet nothing is more certain than that the ultimate, dis- 
tant, and perhaps indirect consequences of political measures are often 
far more important than their immediate fruits, and that in the pros- 
perity of nations a large amount of continuity in politics and the 
gradual formation of political habits are of transcendent importance. 
V**^ History is never more valuable than when it enables us, standing as on 
a height, to look beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, 
and to detect in the slow developments of the past the great permanent 
forces that are steadily bearing nations onward to improvement or 
decay. 

The strongest of these forces are the moral ones. Mistakes in 
statesmanship, military triumphs or disasters, no doubt affect mater- 
ially the prosperity of nations, but their permanent political well- 
being is essentially the outcome of their moral state. Its foundation 
is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in a high standard 
of moral worth and of pubHc spirit; in simple habits, in courage, up- 
rightness, and self sacrifice, in a certain soundness and moderation of 
judgment, which springs quite as much from character as from intellect. 
If you would form a wise judgment of the future of a nation, observe 
carefully whether these qualities are increasing or decaying. Observe 
especially what qualities count for most in public life. Is character 
becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men who obtain the 
highest posts in the nation men of whom in private life and irrespective 
of party competent judges speak with genuine respect? Are they men 
of sincere convictions, sound judgment, consistent lives, indisputable in- 
tegrity, or are they men who have won their positions by the arts of 
a demagogue or an intriguer; men of nimble tongues and not earnest be- 
liefs — skilful, above all things, in spreading their sails to each passing 
breeze of popularity'^ Such considerations as these are apt to be for- 
gotten in the fierce excitement of a party contest ; but if history has any 
meaning, it is such considerations that affect most vitally the perma- 
nent well-being of communities, and it is by observing this moral cur- 
rent that you can best cast the horoscope of a nation. 

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LE^iY. 
Historical and Political Essays, pp. 40, 4^, 4^- •""""''^ 



CONCLUSION 

In conclusion, attention should be directed to this vivid picture, 
drawn by the pen of one of the most brilliant and accurate writers in 
all history, of the conditions which presage the decline and decay of a 
nation. The conditions as described have a special application to 



BETTS-EOOSBVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 69 

this country at the present time as a result of the revival of the im- 
practical and primitive system of a pure democracy. "Insincerity, 
pretense, intrigue, and nimble tongued demagogues, spreading sails to 
each passing breeze" are the order of the day. This enables the 
student of history to "cast the horoscope" of the present drift of this 
nation. Pure democracy is the promoter of strife, contention and cor- 
ruption. It makes conditions which lead self-respecting men of char- 
acter and standing and the ablest and best statesmen to retire from 
public life because they do not care to enter a "rough and tumble" 
contest against money, venality and ignorance where prize ring methods 
become the highest ideals. It creates conditions in which demagogues 
spring up, multiply and flourish Hke "mushrooms on a rich and rotten 
bed of earth." It is a form of government, which by its attempted 
"rough and tumble" mass action, was the rock on which all of the 
ancient republics were wrecked. 

The Ancients had never discovered a workable system of govern- 
ment between the extremes of a pure democracy which was a failure, and 
an aristocracy or a monarchy, both of which curtailed individual 
liberty and denied to the great mass of the people a controlling voice 
in the affairs of their government. 

The statesmen who founded the American republic were the first 
practical exponents and founders of a free representative democracy, 
which has proved its adaptability to any and every extent of territory 
and population, and which at the same time, guards and protects 
individual liberty and gives the people a controlling voice in the affairs 
of their government. 

I have greater confidence in the wisdom of the fathers who 
founded this free republic than I have in the noise of their hysterical 
sons who are trying to destroy it. 

I am opposed to the initiative, the referendum and the recall; 
these political fallacies are older than civilization and were conceived 
in ignorance of the science of government and born in the throes of 
hysteria and tumult. 

I am opposed to a pure democracy, because, in the last analysis, 
it means democratic socialism and government by collective ignorance. 

I am in favor of the American representative democracy, because 
it means popular rule by selected intelligence, through the chosen 
representatives of the people. 

I believe that a representative democracy is the most scientific 
and beneficent government ever instituted among men when founded 
upon Madison's law of representation: 

"The representation should be large enough to guard against 
the cabals of the few and small enough to guard against the confusion 
of the multitude." 

This country is facing the greatest crisis since the civil war. We 
are on the eve of a political revolution. The fundamental principles 
of our government and the stability of our institutions are threatened 
by the wanton attacks of designing and ambitious demagogues. It is 



70 BETTS-EOOSEVBLT LETTEKS— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

just as important that every patriotic citizen should now spring to 
the defense of our representative institutions as it was for them to 
rush to the defense of the country when the Union was attacked by 
secession and treason. The treason of the present is as dangerous as 
the treason of the past. It is not as apparent to the average citizen 
but it is just as apparent to the student of history. The time has come 
for action. The time has come when every patriotic citizen should 
study the questions of the hour and prepare for the conflict. 

In the present crisis, it will require all the intelligence, the pa- 
tience and the wisdom of the American people, together with the 
highest statesmanship of our country, to solve the great problem 
which now confronts us. Government founded on law, order, sta- 
bility and progress will be supported by every patriot but government 
by hysteria, tumult and anarchy will be supported by every demagogue 
and traitor. 

The demand of the hour is: 
"God give us men! a time like this demands 
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands; 
Men whom the lust of oflEice does not kill; 
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 
Men who possess opinions and a will; 
Men who have honor, — men who will not lie; 
Men who can stand before a Demagogue, 
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 
In public duty and in private thinking." 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 71 

PARTY GOVERNMENT AND PARTY ORGAN- 
IZATION 

The political parties which I style great are those which cling to principles more 
than to their consequences; to general, and not to special cases; to ideas, and not 
to men. These parties are usually distinguished by a noble character, by more 
generous passions, more genuine convictions, and a more bold and open conduct 
than the others. 

Minor parties are, on the other hand, generally deficient in political faith. As 
they are not sustained or dignified by a lofty purpose, they ostensibly display the 
egotism of their character in their actions. They glow with a factious zeal; their 
language is vehement but their conduct is timid and irresolute. The means they 
employ are as wretched as the end at which they aim. — Detocqueville Democracy 
in America. 

I believe in party government and party organization. Without 
cohesion and concentration of energy and ability there can be no 
great achievements. In a republic like ours — the only instrumen- 
tality, the only agency through which the government can be admin- 
istered, is through the agency of a political party. 

Burke tells us that 

"A political party is a body of men united for promoting by their 
joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principles 
in which they are all agreed." 

And then he says: 

"It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the 
proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is 
the philosopher in action, to find out proper means toward those ends, 
and to employ them with effect." 

The New York Times, on May 16, 1908, contained an editorial 
from which I quote the following: 

"It may be said that the expectation of office is not the noblest 
motive of political action, but a party policy that does not contem- 
plate the raising of the leading men of the party to places of honor 
and influence is senseless and without any reason for existence. 

"Parties wither away when the distinction and the honors of 
public life are put beyond the reach of their men of character, ability 
and ambition. The hope of such distinction is a stimulus, not only to 
party zeal and loyalty, but to individual effort and development. It 
produces great men." 

No greater crystalization and condensation of true political 
philosophy was ever contained in fewer words. 

I am a partisan. The neuter gender is as unpopular and unpro- 
ductive in politics as in nature. Neutrality is a negative, denatured 
force, which always spells failure. Partisanship is vitalized energy. 
It is the mainspring of action, ambition and achievement. 

I want to say a word right here in regard to the much abused 
political organizations, which are the modern outgrowth of political 
•evolution. 



72 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

Professor Ford, of Princeton University, speaking of the changed 
political conditions and the evolution and growth and strength and 
power of political organizations says: 

"Nowhere else in the world, at any period, has party organiza- 
tion had to cope with such enormous tasks as in this country, and its 
efficiency in dealing with them is the true glory of our political system. 

"This conclusion may be distasteful, since it is the habit of the 
times to pursue public men with calumny and detraction; but it 
follows, that when history comes to reckon the achievements of our 
age, great party managers will receive an appreciation very different 
from what is now accorded to them." — (Ford's Rise and Growth of 
American Politics. Page 310.) 

The great mass of the rank and file of all parties do not aspire to 
public office. They are occupied with their own personal and private 
business, but they are true and loyal to their party because they be- 
lieve in its principles and policies and because they admire its leading 
statesmen, love its traditions and take a patriotic pride in its record 
and achievements. They will sometimes become temporarily in- 
fatuated with a certain man whom they have elected to office, but as 
soon as they discover he is exploiting his own personal fortunes at the 
expense of the party, their infatuation fades away and they return 
to their first love — to their party — and they continue to remain true 
and loyal to it. 

Loyalty is the corner stone of character. It is the sublime rock 
upon which all other virtues rest. Remove it, and all other virtues 
decline and die in weeds and dust. 

He who is true and loyal to his friends, his party, his principles 
and his ideals, is a good and stable citizen, and it is upon the shoulders 
of such citizens that the Republic must rest, and it is upon their 
reliability and solidity of character that the stabihty and perpetuity 
of the Republic itself depends. 

This Republic, if it is to endure, must have something more sub- 
stantial and secure to rest upon than the ever changing political 
weather cocks, who shift with every breeze, hke willows in the wind. 

I agree with former Governor Black when he says: 

"The sound of water does not necessarily mean the ocean." 

And notwithstanding the cackle of the mugwumps and the noise 
of the demagogues, the political wrecks — the disloyal wrecks, strewn 
along the political highway, from Greeley down to date, bear eloquent 
and conclusive testimony to the fact that in this moral, this civilized, 
this enlightened age, party treason has not yet become a virtue and 
party loyalty has not yet become a crime, and they never will become 
so, as long as reason is the torch that lights and patriotism is the mo- 
tive that moves mankind to pohtical action. 

CHARLES H. BETTS. 
Speech in Baptist Church, at Lyons, 
Oct. 9, 1910. 



LAWS RELATIVE TO EMPLOYER'S LIABIL- 
ITY AND WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION 

It will be impossible to give thi.? subject any thing like adequate 
treatment in the space at my disposal. The relations of employers and 
employes under our modern industrial development have become one 
of the most complex, important and difficult problems with which we 
have to deal. 

When industries were small and carried on by individuals, and 
the relations of employer and employe were more intimate and per- 
sonal, accidents were rare and the question of employer's liability was a 
simple matter. Under the Common Law of England and the United 
States, the legal relations of the employer and the employe, up to 1837, 
did not differ in anyway from the legal relations of strangers, and there 
were no special rules as to the employer's liability. If ''A" was hurt 
by ''B's" neglect, "B" was bound to compensate "A," whether "A" 
was an employe or not. Therefore, the relations of employer and em- 
ploye were the relations existing between all other persons. 

This was the rule of the Common Law up to 1837, but since that 
time a great change has taken place. The rapidly increasing indus- 
trial development of the modern world has given rise to large business 
institutions and corporations, to concentration of capital, energy and 
ability, and to the carrying on of large enterprises and manufacturing 
establishments, which have entirely changed the relations of employer 
and employe by the introduction of machinery and other appliances 
used in manufacturing and other industries. 

Therefore, under our modern industrial system, there has grown 
up what is called "extra-hazardous" employment. That is to say, 
there are industries in which employes are at work with certain kinds 
of machinery and appliances, which render their operation more or 
less dangerous. Owing to this fact the old rules of the Common Law 
were adapted to new conditions and in some instances were changed by 
the Courts and new rules were laid down governing the relations 
between employer and employe. 

Under the Common Law rules, as modified by the courts and as 



74 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

they have existed for a long time and as they now exist, the employer's 
duty to his employe is defined to be reasonable care for the safety of 
his employe while he is performing his work. This duty includes the 
following : 

First, — The duty to provide a reasonably safe place to work. 

Second, — The duty to provide reasonably safe tools and appli- 
ances. 

Third, — The duty of being reasonably careful in hiring agents, 
and servants, fit for the work they are to do. 

Fourth, — The duty of providing suitable rules for carrying on the 
work. 

Under the present Common Law rules, as established or construed 
by the courts, if an employe is injured by the failure in any of these 
duties by the employer, the employe may recover full compensation 
for his injury, the amount to be determined by jury trial in an action 
at law. The right of action is here based on the employer's negligence 
or fault. This is the fundamental principle of the Common Law, as 
applied to injuries to employes, both in England and America, brought 
down from 1837 and now in force in the State of New York. 

There have been, however, some modifications of this fundamen- 
tal principle. The employer has certain defenses and may invoke 
certain rules as a bar to an action at law by an injured employe, which 
are very important and which constitute the court's modification of 
principle above stated and are therefore additions to the Common 
Law and have become what is known as court-made laws. Among 
this class of laws are the following: — 

First; Contributory Negligence. If an employe who is injured 
has failed to use reasonable care himself and through such negligence 
becomes injured, he can not recover damages from his employer. 
The burden of proof rests upon the employe to show freedom from 
negligence in order to make out his case. The rule is that he must 
come into court with "clean hands"; that is, free from fault. 

Second; Fellow Servant Rule. If an employe be injured by the 
negligence of a fellow servant, that act will bar his recovery against 
the employer at Common Law. 

Third; Assumption of Risk. This important defense which an 
employer has under the Common Law is the assumption of risk by 
the employe. An employe entering employment is held to assume and 
consent to the ordinary and obvious risks incident to the employment, 
and if injured thereby can not recover from his employer for the or- 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 75 

dinary risk of the occupation. Neither can he recover for the em- 
ployer's neglect or violation of his duties, if the employe knew of such 
neglect or violation. 

This Common Law system of employer's liability developed along 
the same lines, both in England and the United States, up to the time 
thab the new element in the relations between employer and employe 
was injected into the industrial world by the invention and use of 
modern machinery. 

This Common Law system, as it relates to employer's liability, 
has been changed in this state by legislation; first, by statutes which 
place new duties upon the employer; second, by statutes which in- 
crease the rights of the working man. 

The labor law of 1897 n this state prescribed certain standards 
or methods of safeguarding work in certain employments, to which 
an employer must conform, and gave the Department of Labor power 
to compel compliance with that law. 

In 1902, an employer's liability act was passed, designed to 
increase the rights of the working man. This law did not work satis- 
factorily and the Wainwright Commission appointed by the legisla- 
ture in 1910, in a very exhaustive and able report upon this whole 
subject, speaking of the law, says: 

"It is probably a correct statement that in more 
than 90% of the cases in which recovery would be pos- 
sible under the act, it would be equally possible at Com- 
mon Law, though this estimate is not susceptible of 
exact proof." 

The Commission then states that this law was modelled after the 
Enghsh act of 1880. 

After these enactments the next act passed in response to general 
agitation was what is known as the Barnes Act, and it is Chapter 657 
of the Laws of 1906. 

Section 42-a of the Railroad Law, as added by this act, contains 
a provision that if an employe in the service of any railroad is injured 
by any defect in the ways, rules, machinery, plant, tools, etc., of the 
employer, when such defect could have been discovered by proper in- 
spection, the employer shall be deemed to have had knowledge of the 
facts and further that the fact of the defect shall be 'prima Jade evi- 
dence of the negligence of the employer. This act also modified the 
fellow servant rule as applied to railroads. 

The act did not, however, bring the desired relief to the employe 



76 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

which was contemplated, and the agitation continued for a more 
liberal employer's liability law, one that would be more favorable to 
the employe. 

One reason for this continued agitation is the fact that in the 
trials of cases for accident, it was discovered that the injured employe 
hardly ever received a just proportion of the money actually paid by 
the employer for damages. As soon as this legislation was enacted, 
every time an accident occured where a corporation or a manufacturer 
was involved, there was usually a lawyer immediately on the ground 
who interviewed the injured party as soon as the doctor — and some- 
times sooner and secured from him a contract to take the case against 
the corporation, or the manufacturer, upon a speculative basis. This 
large and ever increasing class of lawyers is known as "ambulance 
chasers," and it was discovered that the employer's liability act, 
instead of actually giving adequate reUef or benefit to the employe, 
in many cases enriched the lawyer, who received more than his just 
due of the money paid by the employer to his injured employe. 

In addition to this it was discovered that the bringing of such 
actions always created friction and resulted in strained relations be- 
tween the employer and the employe. About the only person bene- 
fited in the final result was the ambulance chasing lawyer. 

This situation led to more agitation and a serious attempt to find 
some solution of the problem which would be fair and satisfactory both 
to the employer and the employe. As a result of this agitation a 
commission was appointed in this state under a bill introduced and 
passed by Assemblyman Cyrus W. Phillips, known as the Wainwright 
Commission, for the purpose of investigMing the whole subject of 
employer's liabiUty legislation in this and other countries with the 
view of trying to frame legislation which would more justly and ade- 
quately meet the situation. This commission conducted one of the 
most thorough, intelligent and exhaustive examinations of the ques- 
tion which has ever been conducted in this or any other courtry. 
Some of the information which I am presenting is drawn from that re- 
port, and I want to make acknowledgment of my obligation to this 
commission for many of the facts herein set forth. 

When this commission had completed its investigation a bill was 
framed, introduced and passed in the New York State legislature, 
known as the Workman's Compensation Act. In fact, there were two 
such bills framed and passed, one was compulsory, the other volun- 
tary. It was believed by the commission that the voluntary act would 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 77 

meet the situation because it was thought it would be generally taken 
advantage of and make the compulsory act unnecessary, and besides 
there was doubt about the constitutionality of the last mentioned act. 
In its hope that the voluntary act would be taken advantage of by both 
sides, the commission was mistaken and was greatly disappointed. 
I am informed that there were practically no voluntary contracts made 
between employer and employe and that this provision of the act, 
though desirable in principle, has become a dead letter on the statute 
books because of the many and complicated details provided to carry 
it into effect. 

The Workman's Compulsory Compensation Act was declared 
unconstitutional by the New York State Court of Appeals in a learned 
and exhaustive opinion, on the ground that it provided for the taking 
of the employer's property without "due process of law," and thereby 
violated the Constitution of the State. 

This decision was rendered in what is known as the case of Ives 
V. South Buffalo Railroad Company, 201 N. Y., 271. 

This decision of the Court of Appeals has been vigorously crit- 
icised and especially by former President Theodore Roosevelt, who 
has repeatedly made violent attacks upon the Court of Appeals of 
this state because of the decision rendered in this case. In his criti- 
cism of the court Col. Roosevelt does not seem to take into considera- 
tion that it is not the duty of the court to render decisions in accor- 
dance with the latest ideas of political agitators, or in harmony with 
public sentiment, but it is the sworn duty of the court to decide such 
cases in harmony with the constitution. 

Whenever the constitutionality of a statute is called in question, 
it is the duty of the court to disregard all other considerations and 
decide the case solely upon the merits. If the act of the legislature 
violates a provision of the constitution, which the people themselves 
in their sovereign capacity have adopted, then the legislature trans- 
cends the limit of its power, and it is the duty of the court to declare 
such an act unconstitutional. 

This is exactly what the New York State Court of Appeals did in 
the case under consideration. The Wainwright Commission, when 
this bill was framed and submitted to the legislature, in its report 
called attention to the provisions of the constitution of this state which 
prevent the enactment of legislation such as had been enacted along 
this line in foreign countries. 

The leading lawyers of the legislature had doubt about the con- 



78 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

stitutionality of the act. Governor Hughes, when he signed the bill, 
expressed a doubt as to its constitutionality. He said it was a close 
question as to its constitutionality and he had serious doubts about its 
being constitutional, but owing to the transcendant importance of the 
question, he would sign the bill and let the matter go to the courts 
so that the constitutionality of the act could be determined, because 
he said it was a question upon which the courts should pass so that if it 
was necessary in order to accomplish the desired result, a constitu- 
tional amendment might be submitted to the people. 

Thus it will be seen that the framers of the law, that the leading 
lawyers in the legislature and Governor Hughes, all had doubt about 
the constitutionality of this act at the time it became a law. The de- 
cision of the Court of Appeals simply cleared up and confirmed that 
doubt. 

I am calling attention to these facts for the purpose of showing 
the character of the unwarranted attack which has been made upon 
the New York State Court of Appeals by Col. Roosevelt. 

I wish to call attention to the fact that after quoting at length 
from the report of the Wainwright Commission, the court said: 

"This quoted summary of the report of the com- 
mission to the legislature, which clearly and fairly 
epitomizes what is more fully set forth in the body of 
the report, is based upon a most voluminous array of sta- 
tistical tables, extracts from the works of philosophical 
writers and the industrial laws of many countries, all of 
which are designed to show that our own system of 
dealing with industrial accidents is economically, mor- 
ally and legally unsound. Under our form of govern- 
ment, however, the courts must regard all economic, 
philosophical and moral theories, attractive and desir- 
able though they may be, as subordinate to the primary 
question whether they can be moulded into statutes 
without infringing upon the letter or the spirit of our written 
constitutions. In that respect we are unlike any of the 
countries whose industrial laws are referred to as models 
for our guidance. In our country the federal and the 
state constitutions are the charts which demark the 
extent and the limitations of legislative power; and 
while it is true that the rigidity of a written constitution 
may at times prove to be a hindrance to the march of 
progress, yet more often its stability protects the people 
against the frequent and violent fluctuations of that 
which for want of a better name, we call public opinion. 
With this consideration in mind we turn to the purely^ 
legal phase of the controversy." 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 79 

It will be observed here that the learned court took into consider- 
ation all the facts based upon sociology and philosophy and industrial 
development, but the court properly held that its sworn duty was to 
consider only the legal phase of the controversy and determine whether 
or not the act was in violation of the constitution and infringed upon 
individual rights as guaranteed by that instrument. This position of 
the court is absolutely correct, political agitators to the contrary not- 
withstanding. Upon this point the court further says: 

"In the Labor Law and the Employer's Liability 
Act, which define the risks assumed by the employe, 
there are many provisions which cast upon the employer 
a great variety of duties and burdens unknown to the 
Common Law. These can doubtless be still farther 
multiplied and extended to the point where they deprive 
the employer of rights guaranteed to him by our consti- 
tutions, and there, of course, they must stop." 

And then we come to the crucial point in this case and I quote 
the opinion of the court as follows: 

"This legislation is challenged as void under the 
14th amendment to the Federal Constitution, and 
under Section 6, Art I, of the State Constitution, which 
guarantee all persons against deprivation of life, liberty 
or property without due process of law. We shall not 
stop to dwell at length upon the definition of 'life,' 
'liberty,' 'property' and 'due process of law.' They 
are simple and comprehensive in themselves and 
have been so often judicially defined that there can be no 
misunderstanding as to their meaning. Process of law in 
its broad sense means law in its regular course of admin- 
istration through courts of justice, and that is another 
way of saying that every man's right to life, liberty and 
property, is to be disposed of in accordance with those 
ancient and fundamental principles which were in exis- 
tence when our constitutions were adopted. Due pro- 
cess of law implies the right of the person affected there- 
by to be present before the tribunal which pronounces 
judgment upon the question of life, liberty or property 
in its most comprehensive sense; to be heard by testi- 
mony or otherwise, and to have the right of contro- 
verting by proof every material fact which bears upon 
the question of right in the matter involved. If any 
question of fact or liability be conclusively presumed 
against him this is not due process of law." 

Right here I wish to call attention to the fact that this act pro- 
vided for making a certain class of employers responsible for injuries 



80 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

to their employes, without regard to the negligence of the employer. 
The employer was made liable for damages if he was himself free from 
fault and if his employe was not free from negligence. This is a reversal 
of all former rules of law upon this question in this state and it applied 
only to employers who were conducting a certain kind of industries 
and thereby singled them out as a distinct class upon whom this new^. 
extra and unusual burden was to be imposed. 
Upon this question the court says: 

"The several industries and occupations enumer- 
ated in the statute before us are concededly lawful within 
any of the numerous definitions which might be referred 
to, and have always been so. They are, therefore, under 
the constitutional protection. One of the inalienable 
rights of every citizen is to hold and enjoy his property 
until it is taken away from him by due process of law. 
When our constitutions were adopted it was the law of 
the land that no man who was without fault or negligence 
could he held liable in damages for injuries sustained by 
another. That is still the law, except as to the employers 
enumerated in the new statute, and as to them it pro- 
vides that they shall be liable to their employes for per- 
sonal injury by accident to any workman arising out of 
and in the course of the employment which is caused in 
whole or in part, or is contributed to, by the necessary 
risk or danger of the employment or one inherent in the 

nature thereof. 

* * * 

It is conceded that this is a liability unknown to 
the Common Law, and we think it plainly constitutes 
a deprivation of liberty and property under the Federal 
and State Constitutions, unless its imposition can be 
justified under the police power, which will be discussed 
under a separate head." 

And then the Court adds : 

"We have already admitted the strength of this ap- 
peal to the recognized and widely prevalent sentiment, 
but we think it is an appeal which must be made to the 
people and not to the courts. The right of property 
rests not upon philosophical or scientific speculations, 
nor upon the commendable impulses of benevolence or 

charity." 

* * * 

The right has its foundation in the fundamental law. 
That can be changed by the people, but not by the legisla- 
ture." 



BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 81 

In a government like ours theories of public good or 
necessity are often so plausible or sound as to command 
popular approval, but the courts are not permitted to 
forget that the law is the only chart by which the Ship 
of State is to be guided. Law as used in this sense means 
the basic law and not the very act of the legislature 
which deprives the citizen of his rights, privileges or 
property. Any other view would lead to the absurdity 
that the constitutions protect only those rights which the 
legislatures do not take away. If such economic and so- 
ciological arguments as are advanced in support of this 
statute can be allowed to subvert the fundamental idea 
of property, then there is no property right entirely safe, 
because there is no limitation upon the absolute dis- 
cretion of legislatures and the guarantees of the con- 
stitution are a mere waste of words." 

And the Court adds : 

" If it is competent to impose upon an employer who 
has omitted no legal duty and has committed no wrong, 
a liability based solely upon a legislative fiat that his bus- 
iness is inherently dangerous, it is equally competent to 
visit upon him a special tax for the support of hospitals 
and other charitable institutions, upon the theory that 
they are devoted largely to the alleviation of ills primar- 
ily due to his business. In its final and simple analysis, 
that is taking the property of "A" and giving it to "B" 
and that can not be done under our constitution." 

It will be observed that the legislature, as the court well says, by 
a legislative fiat singled out a certain class of employers and attempted 
to impose a burden upon them which it imposed upon no other class 
of citizens. It attempted by this statute to impose a burden upon 
them and take their property for a purpose for which no other man's 
property is taken. This is clearly a violation of the constitutional 
guarantee of Hberty, equality and property rights. 

The court has rightly and justly held that this is taking property 
without "due process of law" and that it is a violation of the con- 
stitution, and the court points the way out of this difficulty by saying 
that if the people want such a law, and if such a law is desirable, and 
if our industries have developed to that point where such a law is 
necessary for the protection of the laboring man, then the appeal 
should he made to the people to change their constitution and not to 
the courts to change it, because the courts have no right or authority 
to change the constitution. 



82 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 



PUBLIC POWER OF THE STATE 

It is contended by the defenders of the constitutionality of the 
act in question, that it falls within the police power of the state. 
They cite in confirmation of this theory the court decisions under 
the "Civil Damage Act," where liquor dealers and their landlords 
are held liable for damages resulting from injuries or crimes. 

The contention is that the landlord is an innocent party, whose 
property is taken the same as it was proposed to take the employer's 
property under this act, who is innocent of any fault. The merest 
novice can see that these are not parallel cases and that they are 
clearly distinguishable. 

In the case of the landlord who rents his place to a liquor dealer, 
he rents it to carry on a business that has no inherent rights, — it has 
only such rights as are given to it by the legislature, — it has no natural 
or inherent rights because it must first of all get permission from the 
state in the form of a license before it can be permitted to exist as a 
business. 

Therefore, the landlord who rents his place to a liquor dealer for 
the purpose of carrying on such a traffic, knowing that the law imposes 
certain liabilities upon the business, has knowledge of the facts and 
becomes an accomplice in whatever injury results from the traffic 
and is equally liable with the liquor dealer himself. 

The employer upon whom this statute sought to place a new 
liability when the employer was himself free from fault, is quite a 
different question than imposing a liability upon the owner of a place 
where liquor is sold with his knowledge and consent under the re- 
strictions of the statute and who thereby becomes a party to the 
fault. 

Not only this, but the employer affected by this statute, is 
engaged in a business that does not depend upon the legislature for 
its existence; and it is a business which the legislature can not take 
away from him, it does not have to obtain a license from the state, 
because it is protected by the Constitution as one of the inalienable 
rights of individual citizens to engage in such business. 

Attention should be directed to the fact that this is a subject 
which is being considered in nearly every state in the Union and it 
has been the subject of agitation and legislation in nearly every Euro- 
pean country. In England there are no constitutional limitations 
because the acts of Parfiament are the "supreme law of the land," 
and the courts are not obliged to render decisions in accordance with a 
written constitution adopted by the people themselves, as are the 
courts in this country. 

This is an important and growing question and there is no doubt 
that something should be done to afford better protection to the work- 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 83 

ing man, who is employed in these hazardous industries, but the ques- 
tion is how to properly adjust the matter fairly and equitably between 
the employer and the employe. 

If you make one liable for the faults of another, how can you 
reconcile that with justice? If you make an employer, who is free 
from fault, liable for the negligence of his employe, and for the fault 
of his employe, how can that be reconciled with justice? That is 
exactly what this statute did. There must be some other way to 
adjust this matter between the employer and the employe. 

In Germany where they have made an intelligent and serious 
effort to solve this problem, they have established a compulsory 
insurance system, and the employer contributes a certain amount and 
the employe contributes a certain amount to create a fund to be 
available to relieve those who are injured by accident. This has been 
carried to the extent that both the ill and the injured are provided for. 
Upon this subject the Wainwright report says: 

''The German system is dependent upon the work- 
ings of a highly organized bureaucratic government of 
vigorous central powers foreign to American ideas. 
The elements of error and the difference of the condi- 
tions do not admit of a didatic conclusion as to its merits 
when applied to another country." 

In England for a long time there were a certain number of indus- 
tries, fifteen or twenty, which were put in the class of "hazardous" 
industries and the employer was made liable for injuries to the em- 
ploye, but in that country all restrictions have now been removed and 
the law applies not only to industries, but to individuals. 

If a laboring man's wife becomes ill and he hires a woman to come 
in and do the house work I'or a day and in sweeping or dusting she 
happens to run a needle under her finger nail, and by carelessness, 
negligence or ignorance does not attend to it and blood poisoning sets 
in, the employer is liable and must pay the damage. This system 
comes home to the laboring man as well as to the manufacturer, the 
employer and every other citizen. 

So you see that this is a difficult problem. It is one that requ'res 
much study, investigation and experiment to ascertain what an equit- 
able arrangement would be between the employer and the employe to 
insure the employe against inevitable accidents. Nearly every state 
in the Union is experimenting along this line and it is to be hoped that 
some fair and equitable basis will finally be ascertained upon which 



84 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

legislation can be enacted which will be reasonably satisfactory to 
both the employer and the employe. 

The fair, equitable and friendly adjustment of the relations be- 
tween capital and labor is the paramount problem of our age and the 
one which is knocking hardest at the door of our twentieth century 
civilization and demanding a solution. 

LIABILITY OF EMPLOYER IN NEWSPAPER PLANTS 

The Employer's Liability Law, passed in this state in 1910, being 
Chapter 352 of the laws of that year, made many changes in the rela- 
tions between employer and employe, which affect newspaper plants 
as follows: 

First, — An employer is liable for injury to an employe by reason 
of any defect in the ways, works, machinery or plant, which directly 
or indirectly causes an injury. 

Second, — An employer is liable for an injury to his employe by 
reason of the neghgence of a fellow servant, such as a foreman or any 
other person with authority to direct, control or command any em- 
ploye in the performance of his duties. 

Third, — The employe now assumes only the risk inherent in the 
business and no other. The assumption of risk on the part of the em- 
ploye is so changed that the employe can recover damages from the 
employer even if the employe continues to work on a defective machine 
or appliance after he knows that it is defective. This is on the theory 
that it is the duty of the employer to repair or see to it that the de- 
fective machinery is repaired, and therefore, he must himself assume 
the risk. 

But if such employe knows of such defect or negligence, and the 
employer did not know of such defect which caused the injury, and 
the employe failed within a reasonable time to give or cause to be 
given information thereof to the employer, or to some person superior 
to himself in the service of the employer, the employe in such case can 
not recover damages from his employer. 

Fourth, — In case of an injury to the employe if the employer sets 
up the defense that the employe's negligence contributed to the 
accident, the burden of proof is now shifted from the employe to the 
employer. Under the Common Law the employe had to prove him- 
self free from negligence in order to recover damages. The statute of 
1910, chapter 352, reverses this rule of the Common Law. 

Fifth, — An agreement made between the employer and employe 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 85 

relieving the employer of liability under the Common Law has been 
held by the courts to be void in the case of Johnson v. Fargo. 

Sixth, — If an employer sets an employe at work or causes him to 
be set at work on a machine or a press without giving or causing him 
to be given sufficient instructions to operate the machine or press 
properly, the employer is guilty of negligence and liable for damages. 

There is another thing in connection with the decision in the Ives 
case to which I desire to call attention. That is the fact that since the 
Court of Appeals handed it down, nearly every state which has enacted 
workmen's compensation laws, has moulded its statutes in har- 
mony with it, thereby recognizing the fact that it is a sound decision. 

The states of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Illinois, 
Ohio, Michigan, Kansas and California have all passed workmen's 
compensation acts since the Court of Appeals handed down this 
decision and not one of these states has passed a compulsory act 
like the New York State act which the Court of Appeals declared un- 
constitutional. 

Every one of these states has passed an optional or elective 
compensation act which requires the consent of both the employer and 
the employe. It is significant that these so-called progressive states 
have moulded their workmen's compensation acts in harmony with 
the New York State Court of Appeals' decision. No higher tribute 
could be paid to that decision than to have these states recognize its 
legality and mould their statutes in harmony with it. This fact 
alone should forever silence any further criticism of this decision. 

CONCLUSION 

In conclusion I wish to say, that in accordance with the decision 
of the Court of Appeals, the New York State legislature, at the last 
session, passed a constitutional amendment, introduced by Assembly- 
man Cyrus W. Phillips, who was a member of the Wainwright Com- 
mission, which is designed to meet this new industrial situation, and 
when it passes the next legislature it will then be submitted to the 
people and the people themselves will have a chance to rule upon this 
question in the regular, orderly and legal manner prescribed by law. 

The people have some rights which even political agitators are 
bound to respect. The people have a right to amend their own con- 
stitution and this right should never be taken from them by the courts, 
even to gratify the conceit of demagogues, who vainly imagine that 
they alone represent the "whole people." 



86 BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

I heartily endorse the position of Col. Roosevelt when he says: 

"I suppose it is necessary for me to reiterate what 
I have so often said; that I hold the judiciary of the 
Nation in very high regard; that I think the average 
judge is a better public servant than the average execu- 
tive or legislative officer." 

(Outlook, p. 52, May 13, 1911) 

I am glad to state that Col. Roosevelt has said the right thing on 
the right side of this subject and on nearly every other subject, but I 
regret to say that with equal versatility he has said the wrong thing 
on the wrong side of nearly every conceivable subject. It is his 
boundless versatility in advocating all sides of every question that has 
resulted in his unprecedented popularity, which has given him such 
a mighty influence for good and evil. When he exerts his influence to 
undermine public confidence in our courts of justice he becomes an 
evil genius who with ruthless hands, is trying to pull down the pillars 
of the Republic. 

It is unfortunate that we have in this country ambitious political 
agitators and office seekers who pose as the only friends of the people 
and who are in such a hurry to change and amend our constitution 
that they can not wait for it to be done by the people in the regular and 
legal way. 

When the political exigencies of the hour require the putting 
through some scheme "to catch votes" and when they are confronted 
with such a situation they are wiUing to "throw constitutions out of 
the window." 

When some court stands between the people and the legislature 
and declares that the legislature can not usurp and exercise the power 
and authority reserved exclusively to the people themselves in their 
written constitution these impatient political agitators at once begin 
to attack and condemn the courts for not being guided by personal 
whims instead of the constitution. 

Some of these political agitators, who call themselves reformers, 
have such supreme confidence in their own virtue and wisdom, that 
they have come to regard their own personal whims as permanent and 
eternal truths, and they expect judges to acknowledge such whims 
as the "supreme law of the land." When the courts refuse to accept 
them as such they swear at and abuse the courts and declare that the 
judges have become "fossilized" and are no longer "fit to sit upon the 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 87 

bench," and then demand the recall of judges and court decisions by a 
majority vote. 

I am opposed to the recall of judges and court decisions by a 
majority vote. I am opposed to any system that would tend to 
threaten or destroy the independence of the judge upon the bench. 
I am in favor of an independent and fearless judiciary because it is the 
citadel of liberty and justice. Therefore, I am emphatically opposed 
to any doctrine which proposes to make the confusion of the multitude 
the final interpreter of the law, and the passion of the populace the 
final arbiter of justice 



COL. ROOSEVELT AND COURT DECISIONS* 
By p. Tecumseh Sherman 

It seems to me that in recent criticisms of decisions by our New 
York Court of Appeals Mr. Roosevelt has indulged in statements 
which, if he has been correctly reported, are inexcusably inaccurate. 

1. Referring to the Matter of Jacobs (98 N. Y., 98), wherein the 
Court of Appeals held unconstitutional Chapter 272 of the Laws of 
1884, which forbade the manufacture of tobacco on any part of a floor 
used for living purposes in any tenement house in a city having over 
500,000 inhabitants, Mr. Roosevelt is reported to have said: 

The decision of the court in this case retarded by at 
least twenty years the work of tenement reform and was 
directly responsible for causing hundreds of thousands 
of American citizens now alive to be brought up under 
conditions of reeking filth and squalor, which immeasur- 
ably decreased their chance of turning out to be good 
citizens. 

That that decision was responsible for any such consequences as 
Mr. Roosevelt asserts is absurd. What it held was, in brief, that 
people have a right to work in their homes and that the Legislature 
may not interfere with the exercise of that right except so far as may 
be reasonably necessary for the public health, safety, &c., and that 
the act in question, purporting to be for the public health, was not a 
reasonable regulation for that purpose, because it arbitrarily selected 
one article and forbade its manufacture under certain conditions, not 
generally unsanitary, whether unsanitary or not. As a matter of fact 
the act was not designed to protect health but to put out of business 
one set of competitors in a trade war; but of that fact the court neither 
had nor took notice. 

That this decision did not retard the work of tenement reform 
"by at least twenty years" and that it did not prevent the Legislature 
from forbidding the manufacture of tobacco or anything else in tene- 
ment homes "under conditions of reeking filth and squalor," is mani- 

*Priiited by permission. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 89 

fest from the fact that seven years later the Legislature, by Chapter 
673 of the Laws of 1892, empowered the Factory Inspector to regulate 
the manufacture of many things, tobacco included, in tenement houses 
throughout the State and to prevent such manufacture wherever un- 
sanitary. And this later act, strengthened and enlarged by subsequent 
amendments, is still the law (Labor Law, Sectibn 100), and is of un- 
questioned constitutionality. 

So far, then, from having done harm in the way of sanitary reform 
the decision in the Jacobs case has done good by giving the reform a 
proper direction and object. Mr. Roosevelt's criticism receives a 
ready chorus of approval from a large body of ill informed reformers 
who seek to prevent some of the evils of "sweating" by arbitrarily 
forbidding all home manufacture in tenements. But the vast ma- 
jority of tenement houses in New York are of the class better described 
as apartment houses, which are perfectly sanitary, and in such houses 
there is much home work of a good kind, such as fine sewing, art work, 
&c., and under good conditions; and it would be a deplorable and un- 
necessary interference with liberty to forbid such work as an incident 
to the prevention of home work in unsanitary slums. 

2. Mr. Roosevelt is reported as saying also : 

When the Legislature of New York passed a law 
limiting the hours of labor of women in factories to ten 
hours a day for six days a week and forbade their being I 

employed after 9 in the evening and before 6 in the 
morning the New York Court of Appeals declared 
it unconstitutional. 

The Court of Appeals did not do that. It did not hold the pro- 
vision forbidding the employment of women more than ten hours a 
day or six days a week to be unconstitutional. On the contrary that 
provision has been uniformly sustained and enforced by the courts. 
And it is also the law of New York to-day, and of unquestioned consti- 
tutionality, that female minors under twenty-one years of age may 
not be employed in a factory before 6 A. M. nor after 9 P. M. (Labor 
Law, Section 77). 

What the court did hold to be unconstitutional was so much of 
the statute as forbids the employment of adult women in factories 
after 9 P. M. or before 6 A. M. (People vs. Williams, 189 N. Y. 131). 
The effect of a contrary decision would have been to deprive adult 
women of the right to employment in many well paid occupations, 
with short hours of labor, but wherein it is occasionally necessary to 



90 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 

work until 10, 11 or 12 o'clock in the night. And the arbitrariness of 
such a prohibition is shown by the fact that such women are allowed 
by law to work at all hours of the night in other occupations and under 
worse conditions, provided that the work is not in a factory. This 
particular form of prohibition of night work was copied from foreign 
laws, wherein it was designed to stop the employment of night shifts 
of women in mills, &c. No such condition existed or exists in New 
York. If the practice of employing night shifts of women in factories 
should arise in New York the decision in the Williams case does not 
stand in the way of appropriate legislation to prohibit it. 

3. Mr. Roosevelt is reported as saying also that the New York 
Legislature passed a law to prevent the employment of men in filthy 
cellar bakeries for longer than ten hours a day, but that the courts 
have held it unconstitutional. In this instance it is really the United 
States Supreme Court that is in contempt of the Colonel. The facts 
are that the Legislature passed an act (Labor Law, Section 110; Laws 
1897, Chapter 415), forbidding employment in any bakery or confec- 
tionery — whether filthy or the contrary — for more than ten hours a 
day; that the New York Court of Appeals (People vs. Lochner, 177 
N. Y. 145) sustained its constitutionality, but that the United States 
Supreme Court (Lochner vs. New York, 198 U. S. 45) held that in 
the absence of any evidence that baking per se is a particularly un- 
healthy occupation the imposition of a special restriction upon the 
hours of work in that occupation constituted an unnecessary, arbi- 
trary and unreasonable interference with freedom to labor or to con- 
tract for services. 

Mr. Roosevelt has scoffed at this doctrine on the ground that the 
freedom to labor sought to be protected by the court is really "freedom 
to be compelled to work long," and not freedom to work long volun- 
tarily. But in fact the restriction would interfere with liberty to 
work no matter how freely; and unless the power of the Legislature to 
interfere with such liberty is restricted to the enactment of regulations 
reasonably necessary for the public health, safety, &c., there is no 
limit on its power, and it may arbitrarily or in the interests of special 
classes regulate our lives and conduct in any respect. That is exactly 
what the Bill of Rights in our Constitution was meant to prevent. 
There is nothing in this decision to prevent the Legislature from regu- 
lating or prohibiting labor in vile cellar or other unsanitary bakeries. 
On the contrary, there has long been in force a statute of unquestioned 
constitutionality (Labor Law, Section 114) which authorizes the Com- 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTEES— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 91 

missioner of Labor by summary process to close up any bakery that 
is unsanitary. 

4. Mr. Roosevelt is reported as saying also: 

The courts hold unconstitutional the law under 
which a girl was endeavoring to recover damages for the 
loss of her arm because dangerous machinery was un- 
guarded. 

This assertion is a vague appeal to prejudice, and its particular 
reference is uncertain. It conveys the impression that some courts, 
in some cases, have held a statute to be unconstitutional because it 
made an employer hable for damages for failure to guard his machinery. 
There is certainly no decision of the kind by the higher courts of 
New York, and probably none by any American court. On the con- 
trary, our courts generally have interpreted the law in this respect 
so far in favor of injured workmen that an employer who has done his 
level best in safeguarding his machinery may nevertheless be held 
liable in punitive damages if a sympathetic jury, against the prepon- 
derance of evidence and contrary to the prevailing opinion of experts 
decides that he might have guarded it better. 

5. Mr. Roosevelt is reported as saying also: 

The workmen's compensation act but a year or two 
ago was declared unconstitutional by the courts of New 
York, though a directly reverse decision in precisely 
similar language has been rendered not only by the 
State courts of Iowa and Washington but by the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 

I am among those who believe that the decision, and more par- 
ticularly the opinions, of the New York Court of Appeals in the case 
referred to (Ives vs. South Buffalo Railway Co., 201 N. Y. 271) were 
wrong. But no degree of dissatisfaction with that decision can excuse 
such glaring misstatements of fact as are contained in the foregoing 
quotation. There are some doctrines set forth in the opinions in the 
Ives case which it may be contended are directly contrary to doctrines 
laid down in opinions of the United States Supreme Court and of other 
courts. But that a decision directly the reverse of that of the New 
York Court of Appeals in the Ives case has been rendered by the Su- 
preme Court of the United States or the courts of Iowa is wholly un- 
true, for the question decided in the Ives case has not yet been before 
those courts and there has been no decision by them on it. As to the 
merits of the decision there is a good deal to be said on both sides; but 
whatever is said should be confined to the truth. 



92 BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIRITED DISCUSSION 

All the statutes held unconstitutional in the decisions complained 
of by Mr. Roosevelt sought to make sweeping changes in our laws for 
the real or alleged purpose of remedying certain social evils which 
admittedly demand remedy. But those statutes were all more or less 
ill designed for their respective purposes and so framed as to cause in- 
cidentally a disproportionate amount of harm and injustice. By in- 
validating them the courts may have delayed partial relief, but they 
certainly have not prevented the adoption of true remedies for the 
evils aimed at; and by some of those decisions they have protected 
minorities from oppression and injustice under the false guise of 
statutory regulations for the correction of social evils. 

P. TECUMSEH SHERMAN, 

Former New York State 
Commissioner of Labor. 
New York, April 23, 1912. 



BETTS-EOOSEVELT LETTERS— A SPIEITED DISCUSSION 93 

WORDS OF COMMENDATION 

My dear Mr. Betts: Your feelings regarding Mr. Roosevelt, as 
you state them seem almost identical with those which I hold, and 
your reply to him in the correspondence, seems to me admirable both 
as regards matter and manner. 

Your attitude also, throughout the various questions incidentally 
touched upon, commends itself as thorough, sane and sound, and I am 
glad to see opinions which I hold stated with such clearness and co- 
gency. Indeed, I can recall no general treatment of political questions 
in recent years which seem to me more likely to influence public 
opinion healthfully. 

HON. ANDREW D. WHITE, 
Former Minister to Germany. 

My dear Mr. Betts: The Roosevelt-Betts letters on the New 
York State Court of Appeals decision, and the subject of Direct 
Nominations are particularly interesting. I congratulate you. 

ALBERT SHAW, 

Editor of Review of Reviews. 

My dear Mr. Betts: I have received copy of your debate with 
Colonel Roosevelt and have read every word of it. You tell many 
truths in terse and vigorous language, which the people of the present 
time are trying to forget or ignore. I earnestly congratulate you. 

MICHEAL E. DRISCOLL, 

Member of Congress. 

My dear Mr. Betts: Your letter contains a brilliant exposition 
of the fundamental principles which are at stake in the discussion. 

I congratulate you upon your statesman-like grasp of a great 
issue. 

A Justice of Court of Appeals. 

My dear Mr. Betts: Your own letter to Mr. Roosevelt is the 
choice one of the entire collection. I have read it now twice and 
congratulate you most earnestly. It is a grand piece of work, states- 
man-like and convincing, 

HON. HAL BELL, 

Prominent New York Attorney, 



BETTS-ROOSEVELT LETTERS 

A spirited and iUmniQating discussion of the 
decision of the Court of Appeals in the Work- 
man's Compensation Case, direct nominations, 
a pure democracy and the American representa- 
tive democracy, to which is added a timely dis- 
cussion of court decisions affecting working men, 
by P, Tecumseh Sherman, former New York 
State Commissioner of Labor. 

Of the Betts-Roosevelt letters, former Minis- 
ter to Germany, Hon. Andrew D. White says: 

"I can not recall any general treatment of 
political questions in recent years, which seem 
to me more likely to influence pubUc opinion 
healthfully." 

Price, postpaid. 

Bound in cloth, SI. 00. 

Bound in paper, 50 cents. 

Published by 
THE LYONS REPUBLICAN COMPANY 

Lyons, New York 



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